And as she was riding by me,
On me look’d she, and she nodded
So coquettishly and fondly,
That my inmost heart was shaken.
Three times up and downward moving
The procession pass’d, and three times
Did the lovely apparition
Greet me, as she rode before me.
When the train at last had faded,
And the tumult was extinguish’d,
Still that loving salutation
Glow’d within my inmost brain.
And throughout the livelong night
I my weary limbs kept tossing
On the straw (for feather beds
Were not in Uraca’s cottage),
And methought: What meaning was there
In that strange, mysterious nodding?
Wherefore didst thou gaze upon me
With such tenderness, Herodias?
CAPUT XX.
’Twas the sunrise. Golden arrows
Shot against the white mist fiercely,
Which turn’d red, as though sore wounded,
And in light and glory melted.
Finally the victory’s won,
And the day, the triumphator,
Stood, in full and beaming splendour,
On the summit of the mountain.
All the birds in noisy chorus
Twitter’d in their secret nests,
And a smell of herbs arose too,
Like a concert of sweet odours.
At the earliest dawn of morning
To the valley we descended,
And whilst friend Lascaro follow’d
On the traces of the bear,