Does the appalling tidings tell,
"Arm! Arm!"
Rings on the night the loud alarm.

Ah, suddenly that deadly foe has fallen upon the prey,
Yet stoutly rise the Christians and arm them for the foe,
And doughty knights their lances seize and scour their coats of mail,
The soldier with his cross-bow comes and the peasant with his flail.
And Jaen's proud hidalgos, Andujar's yeomen true,
And the lords of towered Ubeda the pagan foes pursue;
And valiantly they meet the foe nor turn their backs in flight,
And worthy do they show themselves of their fathers' deeds of might,
While in Baeza every bell
Does the appalling tidings tell,
"Arm! Arm!"
Rings on the night the loud alarm.

The gates of dawn are opened and sunlight fills the land,
The Christians issuing from the gates in martial order stand,
They close in fight, and paynim host and Christian knights of Spain,
Not half a league from the city gate, are struggling on the plain.
The din of battle rises like thunder to the sky,
From many a crag and forest the thundering echoes fly,
And there is sound of clashing arms, of sword and rattling steel,
Moorish horns, the fife and drum, as the scattering squadrons reel,
And the dying moan and the wounded shriek for the hurt that none can
heal,
While in Baeza every bell
Does the appalling tidings tell,
"Arm! Arm!"
Rings on the night the loud alarm.

SIEGE OF JAEN

Now Reduan gazes from afar on Jaen's ramparts high,
And tho' he smiles in triumph yet fear is in his eye,
And vowed has he, whose courage none charged with a default,
That he would climb the ramparts and take it by assault,
Yet round the town the towers and walls the city's streets impale,
And who of all his squadrons that bastion can scale?
He pauses until one by one his hopes have died away,
And his soul is filled with anguish and his face with deep dismay.
He marks the tall escarpment, he measures with his eye
The soaring towers above them that seem to touch the sky.
Height upon height they mount to heaven, while glittering from afar
Each cresset on the watch-towers burns like to a baleful star.
His eyes and heart are fixed upon the rich and royal town,
And from his eye the tear of grief, a manly tear, flows down.
His bosom heaves with si