XVI. COVADONGA.

Meantime Pelayo up the vale pursued

Eastward his way, before the sun had climb’d

Auseva’s brow, or shed his silvering beams

Upon Europa’s summit, where the snows

Through all revolving seasons hold their seat.

A happy man he went, his heart at rest,

Of hope and virtue and affection full,

To all exhilarating influences

Of earth and heaven alive. With kindred joy

He heard the lark, who from her airy height,

On twinkling pinions poised, pour’d forth profuse,

In thrilling sequence of exuberant song,

As one whose joyous nature overflow’d

With life and power, her rich and rapturous strain.

The early bee, buzzing along the way,

From flower to flower, bore gladness on its wing

To his rejoicing sense; and he pursued,

With quicken’d eye alert, the frolic hare,

Where from the green herb in her wanton path

She brush’d away the dews. For he long time,

Far from his home and from his native hills,

Had dwelt in bondage; and the mountain breeze,

Which he had with the breath of infancy

Inhaled, such impulse to his heart restored,

As if the seasons had roll’d back, and life

Enjoy’d a second spring.

Through fertile fields

He went, by cots with pear-trees overbower’d,

Or spreading to the sun their trelliced vines;

Through orchards now, and now by thymy banks,

Where wooden hives in some warm nook were hid

From wind and shower; and now thro’ shadowy paths,

Where hazels fringed Pionia’s vocal stream;

Till where the loftier hills to narrower bound

Confine the vale, he reach’d those huts remote

Which should hereafter to the noble line

Of Soto origin and name impart:

A gallant lineage, long in fields of war

And faithful chronicler’s enduring page

Blazon’d: but most by him illustrated,

Avid of gold, yet greedier of renown,

Whom not the spoils of Atabalipa

Could satisfy insatiate, nor the fame

Of that wide empire overthrown appease;

But he to Florida’s disastrous shores

In evil hour his gallant comrades led,

Through savage woods and swamps, and hostile tribes,

The Apalachian arrows, and the snares

Of wilier foes, hunger, and thirst, and toil;

Till from ambition’s feverish dream the touch

Of Death awoke him; and when he had seen

The fruit of all his treasures, all his toil,

Foresight, and long endurance, fade away,

Earth to the restless one refusing rest,

In the great river’s midland bed he left

His honour’d bones.

A mountain rivulet,

Now calm and lovely in its summer course,

Held by those huts its everlasting way

Towards Pionia. They whose flocks and herds

Drink of its water call it Deva. Here

Pelayo southward up the ruder vale

Traced it, his guide unerring. Amid heaps

Of mountain wreck, on either side thrown high,

The wide-spread traces of its wintry might,

The tortuous channel wound; o’er beds of sand

Here silently it flows; here from the rock

Rebutted, curls and eddies; plunges here

Precipitate; here roaring among crags,

It leaps and foams and whirls and hurries on.

Grey alders here and bushy hazels hid

The mossy side; their wreath’d and knotted feet

Bared by the current, now against its force

Repaying the support they found, upheld

The bank secure. Here, bending to the stream,

The birch fantastic stretch’d its rugged trunk,

Tall and erect from whence, as from their base,

Each like a tree, its silver branches grew.

The cherry here hung for the birds of heaven

Its rosy fruit on high. The elder there

Its purple berries o’er the water bent,

Heavily hanging. Here, amid the brook,

Grey as the stone to which it clung, half root,

Half trunk, the young ash rises from the rock;

And there its parent lifts a lofty head,

And spreads its graceful boughs; the passing wind

With twinkling motion lifts the silent leaves,

And shakes its rattling tufts.

Soon had the Prince

Behind him left the farthest dwelling-place

Of man; no fields of waving corn were here,

Nor wicker storehouse for the autumnal grain,

Vineyard, nor bowery fig, nor fruitful grove;

Only the rocky vale, the mountain stream,

Incumbent crags, and hills that over hills

Arose on either hand, here hung with woods,

Here rich with heath, that o’er some smooth ascent

Its purple glory spread, or golden gorse;

Bare here, and striated with many a hue,

Scored by the wintry rain; by torrents here

Riven, and with overhanging rocks abrupt.

Pelayo, upward as he cast his eyes

Where crags loose-hanging o’er the narrow pass

Impended, there beheld his country’s strength

Insuperable, and in his heart rejoiced.

Oh that the Musselman were here, he cried,

With all his myriads! While thy day endures,

Moor! thou may’st lord it in the plains; but here

Hath Nature for the free and brave prepared

A sanctuary, where no oppressor’s power,

No might of human tyranny can pierce.

The tears which started then sprang not alone

From lofty thoughts of elevating joy;

For love and admiration had their part,

And virtuous pride. Here then thou hast retired,

My Gaudiosa! in his heart he said;

Excellent woman! ne’er was richer boon

By fate benign to favour’d man indulged,

Than when thou wert before the face of Heaven

Given me to be my children’s mother, brave

And virtuous as thou art! Here thou hast fled,

Thou who wert nurst in palaces, to dwell

In rocks and mountain caves!... The thought was proud,

Yet not without a sense of inmost pain;

For never had Pelayo till that hour

So deeply felt the force of solitude.

High over head the eagle soar’d serene,

And the grey lizard on the rocks below

Bask’d in the sun: no living creature else

In this remotest wilderness was seen;

Nor living voice was there, ... only the flow

Of Deva, and the rushing of its springs

Long in the distance heard, which nearer now,

With endless repercussion deep and loud,

Throbb’d on the dizzy sense.

The ascending vale,

Long straiten’d by the narrowing mountains, here

Was closed. In front a rock, abrupt and bare,

Stood eminent, in height exceeding far

All edifice of human power, by King

Or Caliph, or barbaric Sultan rear’d,

Or mightier tyrants of the world of old,

Assyrian or Egyptian, in their pride;

Yet far above, beyond the reach of sight,

Swell after swell, the heathery mountain rose.

Here, in two sources, from the living rock

The everlasting springs of Deva gush’d.

Upon a smooth and grassy plat below,

By Nature there as for an altar drest,

They join’d their sister stream, which from the earth

Well’d silently. In such a scene rude man

With pardonable error might have knelt,

Feeling a present Deity, and made

His offering to the fountain Nymph devout.

The arching rock disclosed above the springs

A cave, where hugest son of giant birth,

That e’er of old in forest of romance

’Gainst knights and ladies waged discourteous war,

Erect within the portal might have stood.

The broken stone allow’d for hand and foot

No difficult ascent, above the base

In height a tall man’s stature, measured thrice.

No holier spot than Covadonga Spain

Boasts in her wide extent, though all her realms

Be with the noblest blood of martyrdom

In elder or in later days enrich’d,

And glorified with tales of heavenly aid

By many a miracle made manifest;

Nor in the heroic annals of her fame

Doth she show forth a scene of more renown.

Then, save the hunter, drawn in keen pursuit

Beyond his wonted haunts, or shepherd’s boy,

Following the pleasure of his straggling flock,

None knew the place.

Pelayo, when he saw

Those glittering sources and their sacred cave,

Took from his side the bugle silver-tipt,

And with a breath long drawn and slow expired

Sent forth that strain, which, echoing from the walls

Of Cangas, wont to tell his glad return.

When from the chace he came. At the first sound

Favila started in the cave, and cried,

My father’s horn!... A sudden flush suffused

Hermesind’s cheek, and she with quicken’d eye

Look’d eager to her mother silently;

But Gaudiosa trembled and grew pale,

Doubting her sense deceived. A second time

The bugle breathed its well-known notes abroad

And Hermesind around her mother’s neck

Threw her white arms, and earnestly exclaim’d,

’Tis he!... But when a third and broader blast

Rung in the echoing archway, ne’er did wand,

With magic power endued, call up a sight

So strange, as sure in that wild solitude

It seem’d, when from the bowels of the rock

The mother and her children hastened forth;

She in the sober charms and dignity

Of womanhood mature, nor verging yet

Upon decay; in gesture like a Queen,

Such inborn and habitual majesty

Ennobled all her steps, ... or Priestess, chosen

Because within such faultless work of Heaven

Inspiring Deity might seem to make

Its habitation known.... Favila such

In form and stature as the Sea Nymph’s son,

When that wise Centaur from his cave well-pleased

Beheld the boy divine his growing strength

Against some shaggy lionet essay,

And fixing in the half-grown mane his hands,

Roll with him in fierce dalliance intertwined.

But like a creature of some higher sphere

His sister came; she scarcely touch’d the rock,

So light was Hermesind’s aërial speed.

Beauty and grace and innocence in her

In heavenly union shone. One who had held

The faith of elder Greece, would sure have thought

She was some glorious nymph of seed divine,

Oread or Dryad, of Diana’s train

The youngest and the loveliest: yea she seem’d

Angel, or soul beatified, from realms

Of bliss, on errand of parental love

To earth re-sent, ... if tears and trembling limbs

With such celestial natures might consist.

Embraced by all, in turn embracing each,

The husband and the father for awhile

Forgot his country and all things beside:

Life hath few moments of such pure delight,

Such foretaste of the perfect joy of Heaven.

And when the thought recurr’d of sufferings past,

Perils which threaten’d still, and arduous toil

Yet to be undergone, remember’d griefs

Heighten’d the present happiness; and hope

Upon the shadows of futurity

Shone like the sun upon the morning mists,

When driven before his rising rays they roll,

And melt and leave the prospect bright and clear.

When now Pelayo’s eyes had drank their fill

Of love from those dear faces, he went up

To view the hiding place. Spacious it was

As that Sicilian cavern in the hill

Wherein earth-shaking Neptune’s giant son

Duly at eve was wont to fold his flock,

Ere the wise Ithacan, over that brute force

By wiles prevailing, for a life-long night

Seel’d his broad eye. The healthful air had here

Free entrance, and the cheerful light of heaven;

But at the end, an opening in the floor

Of rock disclosed a wider vault below,

Which never sun-beam visited, nor breath

Of vivifying morning came to cheer.

No light was there but that which from above

In dim reflection fell, or found its way,

Broken and quivering, through the glassy stream,

Where through the rock it gush’d. That shadowy light

Sufficed to show, where from their secret bed

The waters issued; with whose rapid course,

And with whose everlasting cataracts

Such motion to the chill damp atmosphere

Was given, as if the solid walls of rock

Were shaken with the sound.

Glad to respire

The upper air, Pelayo hasten’d back

From that drear den. Look! Hermesind exclaim’d,

Taking her father’s hand, thou hast not seen

My chamber: ... See!... did ever ring-dove chuse

In so secure a nook her hiding-place,

Or build a warmer nest? ’Tis fragrant too,

As warm, and not more sweet than soft; for thyme

And myrtle with the elastic heath are laid,

And, over all, this dry and pillowy moss ...

Smiling she spake. Pelayo kiss’d the child,

And, sighing, said within himself, I trust

In Heaven, whene’er thy May of life is come,

Sweet bird, that thou shalt have a blither bower!

Fitlier, he thought, such chamber might beseem

Some hermit of Hilarion’s school austere,

Or old Antonius, he who from the hell

Of his bewilder’d phantasy saw fiends

In actual vision, a foul throng grotesque

Of all horrific shapes and forms obscene

Crowd in broad day before his open eyes.

That feeling cast a momentary shade

Of sadness o’er his soul. But deeper thoughts,

If he might have foreseen the things to come,

Would there have fill’d him; for within that cave

His own remains were one day doom’d to find

Their final place of rest; and in that spot,

Where that dear child with innocent delight

Had spread her mossy couch, the sepulchre

Shall in the consecrated rock be hewn,

Where with Alphonso, her beloved lord,

Laid side by side, must Hermesind partake

The everlasting marriage-bed, when he,

Leaving a name perdurable on earth,

Hath changed his earthly for a heavenly crown.

Dear child, upon that fated spot she stood,

In all the beauty of her opening youth,

In health’s rich bloom, in virgin innocence,

While her eyes sparkled and her heart o’erflow’d

With pure and perfect joy of filial love.

Many a slow century since that day hath fill’d

Its course, and countless multitudes have trod

With pilgrim feet that consecrated cave;

Yet not in all those ages, amid all

The untold concourse, hath one breast been swoln

With such emotions as Pelayo felt

That hour. O Gaudiosa, he exclaim’d,

And thou couldst seek for shelter here, amid

This aweful solitude, in mountain caves!

Thou noble spirit! Oh when hearts like thine

Grow on this sacred soil, would it not be

In me, thy husband, double infamy,

And tenfold guilt, if I despair’d of Spain?

In all her visitations, favouring Heaven

Hath left her still the unconquerable mind;

And thus being worthy of redemption, sure

Is she to be redeem’d.

Beholding her

Through tears he spake, and prest upon her lips

A kiss of deepest love. Think ever thus,

She answer’d, and that faith will give the power

In which it trusts. When to this mountain hold

These children, thy dear images, I brought,

I said within myself, where should they fly

But to the bosom of their native hills?

I brought them here as to a sanctuary,

Where, for the temple’s sake, the indwelling God

Would guard his supplicants. O my dear Lord,

Proud as I was to know that they were thine,

Was it a sin if I almost believed,

That Spain, her destiny being link’d with theirs,

Must save the precious charge?

So let us think,

The chief replied, so feel and teach and act.

Spain is our common parent: let the sons

Be to the parent true, and in her strength

And Heaven, their sure deliverance they will find.