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.