ight,
And be unable to forbid the deed,
He sorely grieves; but, when he shall that fight
Have done, resolves he will regain the steed;
But Sacripant, whom, like the youthful knight,
No quarrels in the Moor's pursuit impede,
And who was unengaged in other quest,
Upon the Sarzan's footsteps quickly prest;

CXIV
And would have quickly joined him that was gone,
But for the chance of an adventure rare;
Which him detained until the day was done,
And made him lose the track of Ulien's heir:
A woman who had fallen into the Saone,
And who without his help had perished there,
The warrior drowning in that water found,
And stemmed the stream and dragged the dame aground.

CXV
When afterwards he would remount the sell,
From him his restless charger broke astray,
Who fled before his lord till evening fell,
Nor lightly did the king that courser stay.
At last he caught him; but no more could spell
Where he had wandered from the beaten way:
Two hundred miles he roved, 'twist hill and plain,
Ere he came up with Rodomont again.

CXVI
How he by Sacripant was overtaken,
And fought by him, to his discomfit sore,
And how he lost his courser, how was taken,
I say not now, who have to say before,
With what disdain and with what anger shaken,
Against his liege and love, the Sarzan Moor
Forth from the Saracen cantonments sped,
And what he of the one and other said.

CXVII
Wherever that afflicted paynim goes,
He fills the kindling air with sighs that burn;
And Echo oft, for pity of his woes,
With him from hollow rock is heard to mourn:
"O female mind! how lightly ebbs and flows
Your fickle mood," (he cries,) "aye prone to turn!
Object most opposite to kindly faith!
Lost, wretched man, who trusts you to his scathe!

CXVIII
"Neither my love nor length of servitude,
Though by a thousand proofs to you made clear,
Had power even so to fix your faithless mood,
That you at least so lightly should not veer:
Nor am I quitted, because less endued
With worth than Mandricardo I appear;
Nor for your conduct cause can I declare,
Save this alone, that you a woman are.

CXIX
"I think that nature and an angry God
Produced thee to the world, thou wicked sex,
To be to man a plague, a chastening rod;
Happy, wert thou not present to perplex.
So serpent creeps along the grassy sod;
So bear and ravening wolf the forest vex;