d had dealt the blow,
And long had been
And hard the fight; now in his heart's blood low
He wallows, and the pain, the pain is keen.

He raised to heaven his streaming face
And low he said:
"Sweet Jesus, grant me by thy grace,
Unharmed to make this passage to the dead.

"Oh, let me now my sins recount,
And grant at last
Into thy presence I may mount,
And thou, dear mother, think not of my past.

"Let not the fiend with fears affright
My trembling soul;
Though bitter, bitter is the night
Whose darkling clouds this moment round me roll.

"Had I but listened to your plea,
I ne'er had met
Disaster; though this life be lost to me,
Let not your ban upon my soul be set.

"In him, in him alone I trust,
To him I pray,
Who formed this wretched body from the dust.
He will redeem me in the Judgment Day.

"And Muza, one last service will I ask,
Dear friend of mine:
Here, where I died, be it thy pious task
To bury me beneath the tall green pine.

"And o'er my head a scroll indite, to tell
How, on this sod,
Fighting amid my valiant Moors, I fell.
And tell King Chico how I turned to God,

"And longed to be a Christian at the last,
And sought the light,
So that the accursed Koran could not cast
My soul to suffer in eternal night."

THE NIGHT RAID OF REDUAN

Two thousand are the Moorish knights that 'neath the banner stand
Of mighty Reduan, as he starts in ravage thro' the land.
With pillage and with fire he wastes the fields and fruitful farms,
And thro' the startled border-land is heard the call to arms;
By Jaen's towers his host advance and, like a lightning flash,
Ubeda and Andujar can see his horsemen dash,
While in Baeza every bell
Does the appalling tidings tell,
"Arm! Arm!"
Rings on the night the loud alarm.

So silently they gallop, that gallant cavalcade,
The very trumpet's muffled tone has no disturbance made.
It seems to blend with the whispering sound of breezes on their way,
The rattle of their harness and the charger's joyous neigh.
But now from hill and turret high the flaming cressets stream
And watch-fires blaze on every hill and helm and hauberk gleam.
From post to post the signal along the border flies
And the tocsin sounds its summons and the startled burghers rise,
While in Baeza every bell