Their blows were heard nearly a mile in the wood (I. iii. 59).
They came with such a battle-cry as made earth tremble, and sky and sea (I. iv. 51).
The moat brimmed with the blood of the slain (I. xi. 32).
Fire came to his heart and his face, and flamed from his helmet. He ground his teeth. His knees so clamped Brigliadoro that the mighty steed sank in the path (I. xv. 19).
The grinding of his teeth could be heard more than a bow-shot (I. xv. 33).
Otherwise his words are usually as simple as Malory’s. So far, classicism has made no headway in Renaissance verse narrative.
Boiardo’s sentences, as Malory’s, are typically aggregative, sometimes even crude. Instead of tightening a sentence or a stanza, he remains frankly diffuse. Fluent, sometimes slack, he runs on as if orally. His verse is pleasantly varied. Though he hardly ever lets a line end with a down-beat, he freely begins either up or down, or shifts to a dactyl. A stanza rarely runs over; but it is often linked with the next by refrain, as in popular poetry. Here and there the closing line of his octave sounds like an experiment in the direction followed later by Spenser. Inferior in stanza control to Boccaccio and to Ariosto, diffuse, somewhat careless, he is always agreeably and sometimes charmingly fluent.
Yet description, which became a regular Renaissance cue for dilation, Boiardo handles economically. Even where he is conventional he does not dilate; and usually he is both distinct and concise.
That spring was all adorned with white and polished alabaster, and so richly with gold that it shone in the flowery mead (I. iii. 33).
A fair rich palace made of marble polished so smooth as to mirror the whole garden (I. viii. 2).