Ballad Of Albayaldos

Three mortal wounds, three currents red,
The Christian spear
Has oped in head and thigh and head--
Brave Albayaldos feels that death is near.

The master's hand had dealt the blow,
And long had been
And hard the fight; now in his heart's blood low
He wallows, and the pain, the pain is keen.

He raised to heaven his streaming face
And low he said:
"Sweet Jesus, grant me by thy grace,
Unharmed to make this passage to the dead.

"Oh, let me now my sins recount,
And grant at last
Into thy presence I may mount,
And thou, dear mother, think not of my past.

"Let not the fiend with fears affright
My trembling soul;
Though bitter, bitter is the night
Whose darkling clouds this moment round me roll.

"Had I but listened to your plea,
I ne'er had met
Disaster; though this life be lost to me,
Let not your ban upon my soul be set.

"In him, in him alone I trust,
To him I pray,
Who formed this wretched body from the dust.
He will redeem me in the Judgment Day.

"And Muza, one last service will I ask,
Dear friend of mine:
Here, where I died, be it thy pious task
To bury me beneath the tall green pine.

"And o'er my head a scroll indite, to tell
How, on this sod,
Fighting amid my valiant Moors, I fell.
And tell King Chico how I turned to God,

"And longed to be a Christian at the last,
And sought the light,
So that the accursed Koran could not cast
My soul to suffer in eternal night."