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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  The Winning of Cales

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79.

Spain: Cadiz

The Winning of Cales

By Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616)

Translated by Edward Churton

WE saw a banded confraternity,

By soldiers called a squadron, men whose blows

Were dreaded more by friends than English foes,

Holding an Easter May-game in July;

All plumed, as if they meant to mount and fly:

What wonder if, ere fifteen days had close,

This pomp of Babel vanished, as it rose,

Giants and dwarfs, with all their surquedry!

Oft, like a valiant bull-calf, at their drill

Had stout Becerro roared; pale grew the sun

Beneath their smoke; earth trembled at their din:

But all too late at Cales to fight or kill;

The English Earl was gone; his booty won;

And in grand triumph marched our grand Duke in!