For its steel was wrought in the finest forge, in the realm of mighty France.
My preference is for Lockhart’s rendering. Gibson’s first line is extraordinarily clumsy and cacophonous, and the ugly inversions in the second line could scarcely be tolerated outside the boundaries of the nursery. The remaining lines are well enough, but no improvement, I think, upon those of Lockhart, only the whole has a better swing, a livelier lilt, even if in the first line this is roughened by the crudity occasioned by the juxtaposition of so many sibilants and explosives. The Avenging Childe duly accounts for his enemy.
Right soon that knife hath quenched his life—the head is sundered sheer,
Then gladsome smiled the Avenging Childe, and fix’d it on his spear.
Pity it is that a sense of humour seldom chimes with a sense of the romantic. An ‘avenging childe’ who could smile gladly when fixing the head of a foe on his spear seems more fitted for a Borstal institution than for the silken atmosphere of Courts. Yet he married the Infanta, and was knighted and honoured by the King. Possibly they found in him a kindred soul, if all we read in romance regarding kings and infantas be true.
Count Arnaldos
This very beautiful ballad, which is given in the Cancionero of Antwerp (1555), tells how Count Arnaldos, wandering by the seashore one morning, hears the mystic song of a sailor in a passing galley.
Heart may beat and eye may glisten,
Faith is strong and Hope is free,