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“Then Roland takes his horn once more;
His blast is feebler than before,
But still it reaches the emperor;
He hears it, and he halts to shout,
‘Let clarions, one and all, ring out!’
Then sixty thousand clarions ring,
And rocks and dales set echoing.
And they, too, hear,–the pagan pack;
They force the rising laughter back:
‘Charles, Charles,’ they cry, ‘is on our track!’
They fly; and Roland stands alone,–
Alone, afoot; his steed is gone.”

Turpin dies. Roland remains the sole survivor of the host, and he hurt unto death. He falls on the field in a swoon. A wounded Saracen rises, and, seeing him, says,–

“Vanquished, he is vanquished, the nephew of Charles! There is his sword, which I will carry off to Arabia.” He knew not the power of the dying hero.

“And as he makes to draw the steel,
A something does Sir Roland feel;
He opes his eyes, says nought but this,
‘Thou art not one of us, I wis,’
Raises the horn he could not quit,
And cracks the pagan’s skull with it….
And then the touch of death that steals
Down, down from head to heart he feels;
Under yon pine he hastes away
On the green turf his head to lay;
Placing beneath him horn and sword,
He turns towards the Paynim horde,
And there, beneath the pine, he sees
A vision of old memories;
A thought of realms he helped to win,
Of his sweet France, of kith and kin,
And Charles, his lord, who nurtured him.”

And here let us take our leave of Roland the brave, whose brief story of fact has been rounded into so vast a story of fiction that the actual histories of few men equal in extent that of this hero of romance.