No More Learning

But with ill wind and strong the warrior strives;
And, though by little, there too late arrives.

CLI
Thither he came what time Anglante's peer
The useful and the glorious deed had done;
Had slain those paynim kings in the career,
But had a hard and bloody conquest won:
Dead was Sir Brandimart; and Olivier,
Dangerously hurt and sore, sate woe-begone,
Somedeal apart, upon the sandy ground,
Martyred and crippled by his cruel wound.

CLII
From tears could not the mournful Count refrain,
When brave Rinaldo he embraced, and said,
How in the battle Brandimart was slain.
Such love, such faith endeared the warrior dead.
Nor less Rinaldo's tears his visage stain
When he so cleft beholds their comrade's head.
Thence to embrace bold Oliviero, where
He sits with wounded foot, he makes repair.

CLIII
All comfort that he could he gave; though none
Could good Rinaldo to himself afford;
Because he came but when the feast was done;
Yea after the removal of the board.
The servants wend to the demolished town,
There hide the bones of either paynim lord
Beneath Biserta's ruined domes, and nigh
And far, the fearful tidings certify.

CLIV
At the fair conquest won by Roland's blade,
Sansonet and Astolpho make great cheer;
Yet other mirth those warriors would have made
Had Brandimart not perished; when they hear
That he is dead, their joy is so allayed
They can no more the troubled visage clear.
Which of them now the tidings of such woe
To the unhappy Flordelice shall show?

CLV
The night preceding that ill-omened day
Flordelice dreamed the vest of sable grain
That she had made, her husband to array,
And woven with her hand and worked with pain,
Before her eyes all sprinkled-over lay
With ruddy drops, in guise of pattering rain.
That she had worked it so the lady thought;
And then was grieved at seeing what was wrought.

CLVI
And seemed to say, "Yet from my lord have I
Command to make it all of sable hue;
Now wherefore it is stained with other dye
Against his will, in mode so strange to view? "
She from that dream draws evil augury;
And thither on that eve the tidings flew:
But these concealed Astolpho from the dame
Till he to her with Sansonetto came.

CLVII
When they are entered, and she sees no show
Of joyful triumphs, she, without a word,
Without a hint to indicate that woe,
Knows that no longer living is her lord.
With that her gentle heart was riven so,
And so her harassed eyes the light abhorred,
And so was every other sense astound,
That, like one dead, she sank upon the ground.

CLVIII
She in her hair, when life returns again,
Fastens her hand; and on her lovely cheeks,
Repeating the beloved name in vain,
With all her force her scorn and fury wreaks;
Uproots and tears, her locks, and in her pain
Like woman, smit by evil demon, shrieks,
Or, as Bacchante at the horn's rude sound,
Erewhile was seen to run her restless round.

CLIX
Now to the one, to the other now her prayer
She made for knife, wherewith her heart to smite;
Now she aboard the pinnace would repair
That brought the corse of either paynim knight,
And would on either, lifeless as they were,
Do cruel scathe, and vent her fierce despite.
Now would she seek her lord, till at his side
She rested from her weary search, and died.

CLX
"Ah! wherefore, Brandimart, did I let thee
Without me wend on such a dire emprize?
She ne'er before did thy departure see,
But Flordelice aye followed thee," she cries:
"Well aided mightest thou have been by me;
For I on thee should still have kept my eyes;
And when Gradasso came behind thee, I
Thee might have succoured with a single cry;

CLXI
"And haply I so nimbly might have made
Between you, that the stroke I might have caught,
And with my head, as with a buckler, stayed:
For little ill my dying would have wrought.
Anyhow I shall die; and -- that debt paid --
My melancholy death will profit nought:
When, had I died, defending thee in strife,
I could not better have bestowed my life.

CLXII
"Even is averse had been hard Destiny,
And all heaven's host, when thee I sought to aid,
At least my tears had bathed thy visage, I
Should the last kiss thereon, at least, have laid;
And, ere amid the blessed hierarchy
Thy spirit mixt, `Depart' -- I should have said --
`In peace, and wait me in thy rest; for there,
Where'er thou art, I swiftly shall repair. '

CLXIII
"Is this, O Brandimart, is this the reign,
Whose honoured sceptre thou wast now to take?
With thee to Dommogire, thy fair domain,
Thus went I; me thus welcome dost thou make?
Alas! what hope to-day thou renderest vain!
Ah! what designs, fell Fortune, dost thou break!
Ah!