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

'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,