Chapter XXI

“Why need my tongue the issue tell?
We ran our course—my charger fell;
What could he ’gainst the shock of hell?
I rolled upon the plain.
High o’er my head, with threatening hand,
The spectre took his naked brand—
Yet did the worst remain:
My dazzled eyes I upward cast—
Not opening hell itself could blast
Their sight, like what I saw!
Full on his face the moonbeam strook—
A face could never be mistook!
I knew the stern vindictive look,
And held my breath for awe.
I saw the face of one who, fled
To foreign climes, has long been dead—
I well believe the last;
For ne’er, from vizor raised, did stare
A human warrior, with a glare
So grimly and so ghast.
Thrice o’er my head he shook the blade;
But when to good Saint George I prayed,
The first time e’er I asked his aid,
He plunged it in the sheath;
And, on his courser mounting light,
He seemed to vanish from my sight;
The moonbeam drooped, and deepest night
Sunk down upon the heath.
’Twere long to tell what cause I have
To know his face, that met me there,
Called by his hatred from the grave,
To cumber upper air;
Dead or alive, good cause had he
To be my mortal enemy.”