...[Satyrane] said, "Arise thou cursed Miscreant,
That haste with knightless guile and treacherous train
Fair knighthood foully shamed, and doest vaunt
That good knight of the Redcross to have slain.
Arise, and with like treason now maintain
Thy guilty wrong, or else thee guilty yield."
The Sarazin this hearing, rose amain,
And catching up in haste his three square shield,
And shining helmet, soon buckled him to the field...
~
Therewith they 'gan, both furious and fell,
To thunder blows, and fiercely to assail,
Each other bent his enemy to quell,
That with their force they pierced both plate and mail
And made wide furrows in their fleshes frail,
That it would pity any living eye.
Large floods of blood adown their sides did rail;
But floods of blood could not them satisfy:
Both hungered after death; both chose to win, or die.
~
So long they fight, and fell revenge pursue,
That fainting each, themselves to breathen let,
And oft refreshed, battle oft renew.
As when two Boars with rankling malice met,
Their gory sides fresh bleeding fiercely fret,
Til breathless both themselves aside retire,
Where foaming wrath, their cruel tusks they whet,
And trample the earth, the whiles they may respire;
Then back to fight again, new breathed and entire.
~
So fiercely, when these knights had breathed once,
They 'gan to fight return, increasing more
Their puissant force, and cruel rage at once,
With heaped strokes more hugely, than before,
That with their dreary wounds and bloody gore
They both deformed, scarcely could be known.
~ Excerpt from Book I of The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser
* * *
Persevero,
Scribe
