Oh it is ever thus! the old man pursued, The crimes and woes of universal Spain Are charged on him; and curses which should aim At living heads, pursue beyond the grave His poor unhappy soul! As if his sin Had wrought the fall of our old monarchy! As if the Musselmen in their career Would ne’er have overleapt the gulf which parts Iberia from the Mauritanian shore, If Julian had not beckon’d them!... Alas! The evils which drew on our overthrow, Would soon by other means have wrought their end, Though Julian’s daughter should have lived and died A virgin vow’d and veil’d. Touch not on that, Shrinking with inward shiverings at the thought, The penitent exclaim’d. Oh, if thou lovest The soul of Roderick, touch not on that deed! God in his mercy may forgive it him, But human tongue must never speak his name Without reproach and utter infamy, For that abhorred act. Even thou.... But here Siverian taking up the word, brake off Unwittingly the incautious speech. Even I, Quoth he, who nursed him in his father’s hall, ... Even I can only for that deed of shame Offer in agony my secret prayers. But Spain hath witness’d other crimes as foul: Have we not seen Favila’s shameless wife. Throned in Witiza’s ivory car, parade Our towns with regal pageantry, and bid The murderous tyrant in her husband’s blood Dip his adulterous hand? Did we not see Pelayo, by that bloody king’s pursuit, And that unnatural mother, from the land With open outcry, like an outlaw’d thief, Hunted? And saw ye not Theodofred, As through the streets I guided his dark steps, Roll mournfully toward the noon-day sun His blank and senseless eye-balls? Spain saw this And suffer’d it!... I seek not to excuse The sin of Roderick. Jesu, who beholds The burning tears I shed in solitude, Knows how I plead for him in midnight prayer. But if, when he victoriously revenged The wrongs of Chindasuintho’s house, his sword Had not for mercy turn’d aside its edge, Oh what a day of glory had there been Upon the banks of Chrysus! Curse not him, Who in that fatal conflict to the last So valiantly maintain’d his country’s cause; But if your sorrow needs must have its vent In curses, let your imprecations strike The caitiffs, who, when Roderick’s hornëd helm Rose eminent amid the thickest fight, Betraying him who spared and trusted them, Forsook their King, their Country, and their God, And gave the Moor his conquest. Aye! they said, These were Witiza’s hateful progeny; And in an evil hour the unhappy King Had spared the viperous brood. With that they talk’d How Sisibert and Ebba through the land Guided the foe: and Orpas, who had cast The mitre from his renegado brow, Went with the armies of the infidels; And how in Hispalis, even where his hands Had minister’d so oft the bread of life,