XXXVI Not mortal was the blow, yet with the fall On earth sore bruised the man lay in a swoon. Argantes gan with boasting words to call, “Who cometh next? this first is tumbled down, Come, hardy soldiers, come, assault this wall, I will not shrink, nor fly, nor hide my crown, If in your trench yourselves for dread you hold, There shall you die like sheep killed in their fold.”
XXXVII Thus boasted he; but in their trenches deep, The hidden squadrons kept themselves from scath, The curtain made of shields did well off keep Both darts and shot, and scorned all their wrath. But now the ram upon the rampiers steep, On mighty beams his head advanced hath, With dreadful horns of iron tough tree great, The walls and bulwarks trembled at his threat.
XXXVIII An hundred able men meanwhile let fall The weights behind, the engine tumbled down And battered flat the battlements and wall: So fell Taigetus hill on Sparta town, It crushed the steeled shield in pieces small, And beat the helmet to the wearers’ crown, And on the ruins of the walls and stones, Dispersed left their blood their brains and bones.
XXXIX The fierce assailants kept no longer close Undcr the shelter of their target fine, But their bold fronts to chance of war expose, And gainst those towers let their virtue shine, The scaling ladders up to skies arose, The ground-works deep some closely undermine, The walls before the Frenchmen shrink and shake, And gaping sign of headlong falling make:
XL And fallen they had, so far the strength extends Of that fierce ram and his redoubted stroke, But that the Pagan’s care the place defends And saved by warlike skill the wall nigh broke: For to what part soe’er the engine bends, Their sacks of wool they place the blow to choke, Whose yielding breaks the strokes thereon which light, So weakness oft subdues the greatest might.
XLI While thus the worthies of the western crew Maintained their brave assault and skirmish hot, Her mighty bow Clorinda often drew, And many a sharp and deadly arrow shot; And from her bow no steeled shaft there flew But that some blood the cursed engine got, Blood of some valiant knight or man of fame, For that proud shootress scorned weaker game.
XLII The first she hit among the Christian peers Was the bold son of England’s noble king, Above the trench himself he scantly rears, But she an arrow loosed from the string, The wicked steel his gauntlet breaks and tears, And through his right hand thrust the piercing sting; Disabled thus from fight, he gan retire, Groaning for pain, but fretting more for ire.