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(From Covadonga)
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 | 5 |
| Pelayo southward up the ruder vale | |
| Traced it, his guide unerring. Amid heaps | |
| Of mountain wreck, on either side thrown high, | |
| The widespread traces of its wintry might, | |
| The tortuous channel wound: o’er beds of sand | 10 |
| 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. | |
| Gray alders here and bushy hazels hid | 15 |
| The mossy side; their wreathed 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 stretched its rugged trunk, | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| Heavily hanging. Here, amid the brook, | |
| Gray 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 | 30 |
| With twinkling motion lifts the silent leaves, | |
| And shakes its rattling tufts. * * * * * | |
| The ascending vale, | |
| Long straitened by the narrowing mountains, here | |
| Was closed. In front a rock, abrupt and bare, | 35 |
| Stood eminent, in height exceeding far | |
| All edifice of human power, by king | |
| Or caliph, or barbaric sultan reared, | |
| Or mightier tyrants of the world of old, | |
| Assyrian or Egyptian, in their pride; | 40 |
| 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 gushed. | |
| Upon a smooth and grassy plat below, | 45 |
| By Nature there as for an altar drest, | |
| They joined their sister stream, which from the earth | |
| Welled silently. In such a scene rude man | |
| With pardonable error might have knelt, | |
| Feeling a present Deity, and made | 50 |
| His offering to the fountain nymph devout. | |
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