University of Virginia Library

They reached old Burgos
At noontide, while for heat the dogs red-tongued
Slept in the streets. The King had given command
‘Let no man lodge the Cid, or give him bread!’
As slowly on his sixty warriors rode
And gazed on bakers' shops, yet touched no loaf
The gentle townsmen wept, ‘A sorry sight!’
Women were bolder: ‘Vassal good,’ they cried,
‘To churlish Suzerain!’ The Posado's gate
He smote three times with spear-shaft: none replied.
At last beneath its bars there crept a child
Dark-eyed, red-lipped, a girl of nine years old,
Clasping a crust. Sweet-toned she made accost:
‘Great Cid, we dare not open window or door
The King would blind us else. Stretch down thy hand
That I may kiss it!’ At her word my Cid
Stretched down his hand. She kissed it, hiding next
Therein the crust, and closing one by one
O'er it the mail-clad fingers. Laughed my Cid:
‘God's saints protect that shining head from hurt
And those small feet from ways unblest, and send
In fitting time fit mate.’ The sixty laughed:
Once more the child crept in beneath the bars:
They noted long the silver feet upturned
With crimson touches streaked. That night my Cid
Couched on a sand plain with his company
The palm-boughs rustling 'gainst their stems thickscaled.
Half-sleeping thus he mused. ‘Could I, unworthy,
So all unlike that child in faith and love,
Have portioned out that crust among my knights
God might have changed it to a Sacrament
And caused us in the strength thereof to walk
Full forty days.’