Page:A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields.djvu/346

Rh 'Sons of Allah! Unsheathe your bright swords! Sons of Allah! Mount your fleet steeds! Paradise, Eden, Valhalla,
 * Are nothing, are nothing to France.

The olive grows there by the grape and red cherry, 'Tis a garden in blossom, the abode of the peri,
 * A rose-bush in summer's warm glance.'

Arabia from the rocks on our fields all in slumber Came down. . . . Less nightingales springs number,
 * The summers less sheaves and less blooms!

White were the horses, and the mountain winds courted Their manes steeped in silver; and their slim feet disported
 * Rough hair like an eagle's thick plumes.

These miscreant Moors, these cursed sons of Mahound, Drank up all our wells, ate or destroyed all around,
 * Our pomegranates, our grapes, and our figs;

They followed the virgins black-eyed, in our valleys, Of love spake in moonlight, serenaded in alleys,
 * And danced Moorish dances and jigs.

For them were our beauties, for them their brown bosoms, For them their long lashes, their mouths like red blossoms,
 * For them their fair oval faces,

And when they wept, crying out,—'Oh, sons of the demons!' They were put on the croup and carried as lemans
 * Away at fabulous paces.

'Woe to the miscreants—Woe, woe to the faithless! 'Woe,'—said Charlemagne, 'and shall the villains pass scatheless?'
 * And he frowned with white lowering brows,