XXXIII.
“Oh! may I but escape the wild corsair,
“Nor taken be, and after sold for slave[15]!
“Rather than this may lion, wolf, or bear,
“Tiger, or other beast, if fiercer rave,
“Me with his claws and tushes rend and tear,
“And drag my bleeding body to his cave.”
So saying she her golden hair offends,
And lock by lock the scattered tresses rends.
XXXIV.
She to the shore’s extremest verge anew,
Tossing her head, with hair dishevelled, run;
And seemed like maid beside herself, and who
Was by ten fiends possessed, instead of one[16];
Or like the frantic Hecuba, at view
Of murdered Polydore, her infant son;
Fixed on a stone she gazed upon the sea,
Nor less than real stone seemed stone to be[17].
XXXV.
But let her grieve till my return. To show
Now of the child I wish: his weary way
Rogero, in the noon’s intensest glow,
Takes by the shore: the burning sunbeams play
Upon the hill and thence rebound; below
Boils the white sand; while heated with the ray,
Little is wanting in that journey dire,
But that the arms he wears are all on fire.
