In the second chieftain galloped, and he bowed him to the
King,
And his saddle-girths were tightened by the Master of the
Ring;
Through three blazing hoops he bounded ere the desperate
fight began—
Don Fernando! bear thee bravely!—'tis the Moor Abdor-
rhoman!
Like a double streak of lightning, clashing in the sulphurous
sky,
Met the pair of hostile heroes, and they made the sawdust
And the Moslem spear so stiffly smote on Don Fernando's
mail,
That he reeled, as if in liquor, back to Bavieca's tail:
But he caught the mace beside him, and he griped it hard
and fast,
And he swung it starkly upwards as the foeman bounded
past;
And the deadly stroke descended through, the skull and
through the brain,
As ye may have seen a poker cleave a cocoa-nut in twain.
Sore astonished was the monarch, and the Moorish warriors
all,
Save the third bold chief, who tarried and beheld his
brethren fall;
And the Clown, in haste arising from the footstool where
he sat,
Notified the first appearance of the famous Acrobat;
Never on a single charger rides that stout and stalwart
Moor,—
Five beneath his stride so stately bear him o'er the
trembling floor;
Five Arabians, black as midnight—on their necks the rein
he throws,
And the outer and the inner feel the pressure of his toes.
Never wore that chieftain armour; in a knot himself he
ties,
With his grizzly head appearing in the centre of his
thighs,
Till the petrified spectator asks, in paralysed alarm,
Where may be the warrior's body,—which is leg, and
which is arm?
[Original Size]
"Sound the charge!" The coursers started; with a yell
and furious vault,
High in air the Moorish champion cut a wondrous somer-
sault;
O'er the head of Don Fernando like a tennis-ball he sprung,
Caught him tightly by the girdle, and behind the crupper
hung.