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