To which he flung a wrathful answer back: 
  “And if there were an hundred in the wood,
  And every man were larger-limb’d than I,
  And all at once should sally upon me,
  I swear it would not ruffle me so much
  As you that not obey me.  Stand aside,
  And if I fall, cleave to the better man.”

    And Enid stood aside to wait the event,
  Not dare to watch the combat, only breathe
  Short fits of prayer, at every stroke a breath. 
  And he, she dreaded most, bare down upon him. 
  Aim’d at the helm, his lance err’d; but Geraint’s,
  A little in the late encounter strain’d,
  Struck thro’ the bulky bandit’s corselet home,
  And then brake short, and down his enemy roll’d,
  And there lay still; as he that tells the tale
  Saw once a great piece of a promontory,
  That had a sapling growing on it, slide
  From the long shore-cliff’s windy walls to the beach,
  And there lie still, and yet the sapling grew: 
  So lay the man transfixt.  His craven pair
  Of comrades making slowlier at the Prince,
  When now they saw their bulwark fallen, stood;
  On whom the victor, to confound them more,
  Spurr’d with his terrible war-cry; for as one,
  That listens near a torrent mountain-brook,
  All thro’ the crash of the near cataract hears
  The drumming thunder of the huger fall
  At distance, were the soldiers wont to hear
  His voice in battle, and be kindled by it,
  And foemen scared, like that false pair who turn’d
  Flying, but, overtaken, died the death
  Themselves had wrought on many an innocent.

    Thereon Geraint, dismounting, pick’d the lance
  That pleased him best, and drew from those dead wolves
  Their three gay suits of armor, each from each,
  And bound them on their horses, each on each. 
  And tied the bridle-reins of all the three
  Together, and said to her, “Drive them on
  Before you,” and she drove them thro’ the wood.

    He follow’d nearer still:  the pain she had
  To keep them in the wild ways of the wood,
  Two sets of three laden with jingling arms,
  Together, served a little to disedge
  The sharpness of that pain about her heart: 
  And they themselves, like creatures gently born
  But into bad hands fall’n, and now so long
  By bandits groom’d, prick’d their light ears, and felt
  Her low firm voice and tender government.

    So thro’ the green gloom of the wood they past,
  And issuing under open heavens beheld
  A little town with towers, upon a rock,
  And close beneath, a meadow gemlike chased
  In the brown wild, and mowers mowing in it: 
  And down a rocky pathway from the place
  There came a fair-hair’d youth, that in his hand
  Bare victual for the mowers:  and Geraint
  Had ruth again on Enid looking pale: 
  Then, moving downward to the meadow ground,