“A wondrous fight!  The men of France
Thrust fiercely with the burnished lance! 
O, ’twas a sight of grief and dread,
So many wounded, bleeding, dead! 
On back or face together they,
One on another falling, lay! 
The Paynim cannot choose but yield,
And, willy-nilly, quit the field
The eager French are on their track,
With lances pointed at the back. . . .

“Then pricketh forth a Saracen,
Abyme by name, but worst of men
No faith hath he in God the One,
No faith in Holy Mary’s Son;
As black as melted pitch is he,
And not for all Galicia’s gold
Could he be bribed his hand to hold
From murder and from treachery;
No merry laugh, no sportive mien
In him was ever heard or seen. . . . 
The good archbishop could not brook
On pagan such as he to look;
He saw and fain would strike him dead,
And calmly to himself he said,
’Yon pagan, as it seems to me,
A grievous heretic must be;
’There best to slay him, though I died;
Cowards I never could abide.’

“He mounts his steed, won, so they tell,
From Denmark’s monarch, hight Grosselle;
He slew the king and took the steed
The beast is light and built for speed;
His hoofs are neat, his legs are clean,
His thigh is short, his flanks are lean,
His rump is large, his back full height,
His mane is yellow, his tail is white;
With little ears and tawny head,
No steed like him was ever bred. 
The good archbishop spurs a-field,
And smites Abyme upon the shield,
His emir’s shield, so thickly sown
With many a gem and precious stone,
Amethyst and topaz, crystals bright,
And red carbuncles flashing light: 
The shield is shivered by the blow;
No longer worth a doit, I trow;
Stark dead the emir lies below. 
‘Ha! bravely struck!’ the Frenchmen yell: 
‘Our bishop guards the Cross right well!’

“To Oliver Sir Roland cried,
’Sir comrade, can it be denied
Our bishop is a gallant knight? 
None better ever saw the light! 
How he doth strike
With lance and pike!’
Quoth Oliver, ’Then in the fight
Haste we to aid him with our might!’
And so the battle is renewed: 
The blows are hard, the melley rude;
The Christians suffer sore
Four times they charge and all is well,
But at the fifth—­dread tale to tell—­
The knights of France are doomed to fall,—­
All, all her knights; for of them all
God spareth but threescore. 
But O, their lives they dearly sell! 
Sir Roland marks what loss is there,
And turns him to Sir Oliver
’Dear comrade, whom pray God to bless,
In God’s own name see what distress—­
Such heaps of vassals lying low—­
Fair France hath suffered at a blow
Well may we weep for her, who’s left
A widow, of such lords bereft! 
And why, O, why art thou not near,
Our king, our friend, to aid us here? 
Say, Oliver, how might we bring