thy freedom,--yet regain thy native shore.

"Courses three within this circus 'gainst my warriors shalt thou run,
Ere yon weltering pasteboard ocean shall receive yon muslin sun;
Victor--thou shalt have thy freedom; but if stretched upon the plain,
To thy dark and dreary dungeon they shall hale thee back again."

"Give me but the armour, monarch, I have worn in many a field,
Give me but my trusty helmet, give me but my dinted shield;
And my old steed, Bavieca, swiftest courser in the ring,
And I rather should imagine that I'll do the business, King!"

Then they carried down the armour from the garret where it lay,
Oh! but it was red and rusty, and the plumes were shorn away:
And they led out Bavieca from a foul and filthy van,
For the conqueror had sold him to a Moorish dog's-meat man.

When the steed beheld his master, loud he whinnied loud and free,
And, in token of subjection, knelt upon each broken knee;
And a tear of walnut largeness to the warrior's eyelids rose,
As he fondly picked a bean-straw from his coughing courser's nose.

"Many a time, O Bavieca, hast thou borne me through the fray!
Bear me but again as deftly through the listed ring this day;
Or if thou art worn and feeble, as may well have come to pass,
Time it is, my trusty charger, both of us were sent to grass!"

Then he seized his lance, and, vaulting, in the saddle sate upright;
Marble seemed the noble courser, iron seemed the mailed knight;
And a cry of admiration burst from every Moorish lady.
"Five to four on Don Fernando!" cried the sable-bearded Cadi.

Warriors three from Alcantara burst into the listed space,
Warriors three, all bred in battle, of the proud Alhambra race:
Trumpets sounded, coursers bounded, and the foremost straight went down,
Tumbling, like a sack of turnips, right before the jeering Clown.

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 Abdorrhaman!

Like a double streak of lightning, clashing in the sulphurous sky,
Met the pair of hostile heroes, and they made the sawdust fly;
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 gripped it hard and fast,
And he swung it starkly upwards as the foeman bounded p