Morning was sudden-made as an onwardness of hills,
Meant for donning crusade in chainmail glistenings,
The sun visored in misty slats of cold steel,
To glimmer fusty through the godded grove,
A holy sepulchre, earthly-dim to its rafters of oak,
Where the forest-fall of sunlight shed its rosework,
And a red-breasted bird, its song-flight of dappled gleam,
And in the meadow, where colorful whorled the tale of Saladin,
Wayside flowers shook beneath the destriers' cloth caparisons,
A sunny fullness of vales for the crusaders' forest-heartened lungs,
And when this furthering of sights was sunken from,
Still an onwardness of hills to Jaffa like steppingstones.
The Battle of Jaffa in 1192 effectively ended the Third Crusade when Richard the Lionheart’s forces defeated Saladin’s army after routing them at Arsuf, though they failed to recapture Jerusalem.
