En alcance los llevaron A poder de escudo y lança, E al castillo se tornaron E entraron por la matanza. E muchos Moros fallaron Espedaçados jacer; El nombre de Dios loaron, Que les mostró gran plazer. The Moors fled on, with headlong speed, Cursing still their bitter fate; The Master followed, breathing blood, Through old Segura’s opened gate;-- And struck and slew, as on he sped, And grappled still his flying foes; While still to heaven his battle shout, “St. James! St. James!” triumphant rose. Nor ceased the victory’s work at last, That bowed them to the shield and spear, Till to the castle’s wall they turned And entered through the slaughter there;-- Till there they saw, to havoc hewn, Their Moorish foemen prostrate laid; And gave their grateful praise to God, Who thus vouchsafed his gracious aid. It is a misfortune that this poem is lost. Two other poems, written during the reign of one of the Alfonsos, as their author declares,--and therefore almost certainly during that of Alfonso the Eleventh, who was the last of his name,--are also now known in print only by a few stanzas, and by the office of their writer, who styles himself “a Beneficiary of Ubeda.” The first, which consists, in the manuscript, of five hundred and five strophes in the manner of Berceo, is a life of Saint Ildefonso; the last is on the subject of Saint Mary Magdalen. Both would probably detain us little, even if they had been published entire.[122] [122] Slight extracts from the Beneficiado de Ubeda are in Sanchez, Poesías Anteriores, Tom. I. pp. 116-118. The first stanza, which is like the beginning of several of Berceo’s poems, is as follows:-- Si me ayudare Christo · è la Virgen sagrada, Querria componer · una faccion rimada De un confesor que fizo · vida honrada, Que nació en Toledo, · en esa Cibdat nombrada. We turn, therefore, without further delay, to Juan Ruiz, commonly called the Archpriest of Hita; a poet who is known to have lived at the same period, and whose works, both from their character and amount, deserve especial notice. Their date can be ascertained with a good degree of exactness. In one of the three early manuscripts in which they are extant, some of the poems are fixed at the year 1330, and some, by the two others, at 1343. Their author, who seems to have been born at Alcalá de Henares, lived much at Guadalaxara and Hita, places only five leagues apart, and was imprisoned by order of the Archbishop of Toledo between 1337 and 1350; from all which it may be inferred, that his principal residence was Castile, and that he flourished in the reign of Alfonso the Eleventh; that is, in the time of Don John Manuel, and a very little later.[123]