Hath not by his good Angel been cast off For whom thy supplications rise. The Power Whose justice doth in its unerring course Visit the children for the sire's offence, Shall He not in his boundless mercy hear The daughter's prayer, and for her sake restore The guilty parent? My soul shall with thine In earnest and continual duty join... How deeply, how devoutly, He will know
To whom the cry is raised!
Deliberately, in self-possession still,
Himself from that most painful interview Dispeeding, he withdrew. The watchful dog Followed his footsteps close. But he retired Into the thickest grove; there yielding way To his o'erburthened nature, from all eyes Apart, he cast himself upon the ground,
And threw his arms around the dog, and cried,
While tears streamed down, Thou, Theron, then hast
Thy poor lost master,.. Theron, none but thou!
MEANTIME Pelayo up the vale pursued Eastward his way, before the sun had climbed 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.
He heard the lark, who from her airy height,
On twinkling pinions poised, poured forth profuse, In thrilling sequence of exuberant song,
As one whose joyous nature overflowed
With life and power, her rich and rapturous strain. The early bee, buzzing along the way,
From flower to flower, bore gladness on her wing
To his rejoicing sense; and he pursued,
With quickened eye alert, the frolic hare, Where from the green herb in her wanton path She brushed 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 rolled back, and life
He went, by cots with pear-trees overbowered, 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 reached 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
Blazoned; but most by him illustratëd, 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 honoured bones.
Now calm and lovely in its summer course, Held by those huts its everlasting way
Toward 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 Precipitate; here, roaring among crags, It leaps and foams and whirls and hurries on. Grey alders here and bushy hazels hid
The mossy side; their wreathed and knotted feet Bared by the current, now against its force Repaying the support they found, upheld
The bank secure. Here, bending to the stream, The birch fantastic stretched its rugged trunk, Tall and erect, from whence, as from their base, Each like a tree, its silver branches grew. The cherry here hung for the birds of heaven Its rosy fruit on high. The elder there Its purple berries o'er the water bent, Heavily hanging. Here, amid the brook, Grey as the stone to which it clung, half root, Half trunk, the young ash rises from the rock; And there its parent lifts a lofty head,
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