1. The slanderers and beneath me worthless specks of dust,
Whilst deeds in disarray and words are but borrowed talk,

2. You are the wretched fools, the damned and ruined band,
Yet in frays you charge with fractured, fragile sticks.

3. And you ne'er cease to haunt the doors of flightiness;
Through bickering you prop what time demands undoing.

4. You are like peasant girls amidst some field of ruins
With pierced nose and lips - bleating, mindless herd;

5. You see them hunched with shoulders bared for fighting;
Below, their legs spread out, and shirts tucked up.

6. For they are devils with their noble fellows, laid to waste
By tongues so blue and teeth as white as full moons.

7. Their rearguards cry out to those ahead in deep despair
As horses flinch from death, which no man can avoid,

8. And noble steeds, when war weighs hard upon us,
Turn tail, whilst valiant mares press on into the fray.

9. They bear them into every bloody, gory fight
Where bonds and slaughter and disgrace abide.