And the shield from his neck hung bright.
There was arming heard in Valencia’s halls,
There was vigil kept on the rampart walls;
Stars had not faded nor clouds turn’d red,
When the knights had girded the noble dead,
And the burial train moved out.
With a measured pace, as the pace of one,
Was the still death-march of the host begun;
With a silent step went the cuirass’d bands,
Like a lion’s tread on the burning sands;