Opening lines:
WHITE founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of
Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in
that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of
his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have
dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the
Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad
for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the
Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of
the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings
faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the
sun.
Last lines:
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back
in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward
with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in
Spain,
Upon which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And
he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade...
(But
Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
*- SKB, in one of his postings observes that "the Russian word
rooká can mean both arm and hand... A bullet hit his left
arm reducing its mobility, but control of the hand, it seems, was totally lost.
In everyday English, we would not refer to Cervantes as ‘one-armed.’ But,
effectively, in terms of usage, the term is applicable."