A doleful sight then gan he see;
His wife and children three
Out of the fire were fled: 
There they sat, under a thorn,
Bare and naked as they were born,
Brought out of their bed. 
A woful man then was he,
When he saw them all naked be,
The lady said, all so blive,
“For nothing, sir, be ye adrad.” 
He did off his surcoat of pallade,[FN#572]
And with it clad his wife. 
His scarlet mantle then shore[FN#573] he;
Therein he closed his children three
That naked before him stood.

He then proposed to his wife that, as an expiation of their sins, they should at once under take a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; so, cutting with his knife a sign of the cross on his bare shoulder, he set off with the four companions of his misery resolving to beg his bread till they should arrive at the Holy Sepulchre.  After passing through “seven lands,” supported by the scanty alms of the charitable, they arrived at length at a forest, where they wandered during three days without meeting a single habitation.  Their food was reduced to the few berries which they were able to collect; and the children, unaccustomed to such hard fare began to sink under the accumulated difficulties of their journey.  In this situation they were stopped by a wide and rapid though shallow river.  Sir Isumbras, taking his eldest son in his arms, carried him over to the opposite bank and placing him under a bush of broom, directed him to dry his tears, and amuse himself by playing with the blossoms till his return with his brothers.  But scarcely had he left the place when lion, starting from a neighbouring thicket, seized the child and bore him away into the recesses of the forest.  The second son became, in like manner,- the prey of an enormous leopard, and the disconsolate mother, when carried over with her infant to the fatal spot, was with difficulty persuaded to survive the loss of her two elder children.  Sir Isumbras, though he could not repress the tears extorted by this cruel calamity, exerted himself to console his wife and humbly confessing his sins, contented himself with praying that his present misery might be accepted by Heaven as a partial expiation.

Through forest they went days three,
Till they came to the Greekish sea;
They grette,[FN#574] and were full wo! 
As they stood upon the land,
They saw a fleet sailand,[FN#575]
Three hundred ships and mo.[FN#576]
With top-casters set on-loft,
Richly then were they wrought,
With joy and mickle[FN#577] pride: 
A heathen king was therein,
That Christendom came to win;
His power was full wide.