Fain would Pelayo have that hour obey’d The call, commencing his adventurous flight, As one whose soul impatiently endured His country’s thraldom, and in daily prayer Imploring her deliverance, cried to Heaven, How long, O Lord, how long!... But other thoughts Curbing his spirit, made him yet awhile Sustain the weight of bondage. Him alone, Of all the Gothic baronage, the Moors Watch’d with regard of wary policy, ... Knowing his powerful name, his noble mind, And how in him the old Iberian blood, Of royal and remotest ancestry, From undisputed source flow’d undefiled; His mother’s after-guilt attainting not The claim legitimate he derived from her, Her first-born in her time of innocence. He too of Chindasuintho’s regal line Sole remnant now, drew after him the love Of all true Goths, uniting in himself Thus by this double right, the general heart Of Spain. For this the renegado crew, Wretches in whom their conscious guilt and fear Engender’d cruellest hatred, still advised The extinction of Pelayo’s house; but most The apostate Prelate, in iniquity Witiza’s genuine brother as in blood, Orpas, pursued his life. He never ceased With busy zeal, true traitor, to infuse His deadly rancour in the Moorish chief; Their only danger, ever he observed, Was from Pelayo; root his lineage out, The Caliph’s empire then would be secure, And universal Spain, all hope of change Being lost, receive the Prophet’s conquering law. Then did the Arch-villain urge the Moor at once To cut off future peril, telling him Death was a trusty keeper, and that none E’er broke the prison of the grave. But here Keen malice overshot its mark: the Moor, Who from the plunder of their native land Had bought the recreant crew that join’d his arms Or cheaplier with their own possessions bribed Their sordid souls, saw through the flimsy show Of policy wherewith they sought to cloak Old enmity, and selfish aims: he scorn’d To let their private purposes incline His counsels, and believing Spain subdued, Smiled, in the pride of power and victory, Disdainful at the thought of farther strife. Howbeit he held Pelayo at his court, And told him that until his countrymen Submissively should lay their weapons down, He from his children and paternal hearth Apart must dwell; nor hope to see again His native mountains and their vales beloved, Till all the Asturian and Cantabrian hills Had bow’d before the Caliph; Cordoba Must be his nightly prison till that hour. This night, by special favour from the Moor Ask’d and vouchsafed, he pass’d without the walls Keeping his yearly vigil; on this night Therefore the princely Spaniard could not fly, Being thus in strongest bonds by honour held; Nor would he by his own escape expose To stricter bondage, or belike to death, Count Pedro’s son. The ancient enmity Of rival houses from Pelayo’s heart