Now her deep voice, the soul’s awakener, swells, Wild Alpuxarras! through your inmost dells. There, the dark glens and lonely rocks among, As at the clarion’s call, her children throng. She with enduring strength has nerved each frame, And made each heart the temple of her flame, Her own resisting spirit, which shall glow Unquenchably, surviving all below. There high-born maids, that moved upon the earth More like bright creatures of aërial birth, Nurslings of palaces, have fled to share The fate of brothers and of sires; to bear, All undismay’d, privation and distress, And smile the roses of the wilderness: And mothers with their infants, there to dwell In the deep forest or the cavern cell, And rear their offspring midst the rocks, to be, If now no more the mighty, still the free. And midst that band are veterans, o’er whose head Sorrows and years their mingled snow have shed: They saw thy glory, they have wept thy fall, O royal city! and the wreck of all They loved and hallow’d most:--doth aught remain For these to prove of happiness or pain? Life’s cup is drain’d--earth fades before their eye; Their task is closing--they have but to die. Ask ye why fled they hither?--that their doom Might be, to sink unfetter’d to the tomb. And youth, in all its pride of strength, is there, And buoyancy of spirit, form’d to dare And suffer all things--fall’n on evil days, Yet darting o’er the world an ardent gaze, As on the arena where its powers may find Full scope to strive for glory with mankind. Such are the tenants of the mountain-hold, The high in heart, unconquer’d, uncontroll’d: By day, the huntsmen of the wild--by night, Unwearied guardians of the watch-fire’s light, They from their bleak majestic home have caught A sterner tone of unsubmitting thought, While all around them bids the soul arise To blend with nature’s dread sublimities. --But these are lofty dreams, and must not be Where tyranny is near:--the bended knee, The eye whose glance no inborn grandeur fires, And the tamed heart, are tributes she requires; Nor must the dwellers of the rock look down On regal conquerors, and defy their frown. What warrior-band is toiling to explore The mountain-pass, with pine-wood shadow’d o’er, Startling with martial sounds each rude recess, Where the deep echo slept in loneliness? These are the sons of Spain!--Your foes are near, O exiles of the wild sierra! hear! Hear! wake! arise! and from your inmost caves Pour like the torrent in its might of waves!