After his sin brings the Moors into Spain and his army is destroyed in 711, King Roderick survives in disguise as a penitent monk. Southey’s long blank-verse poem follows him through the conquered land as he seeks atonement, inspires Pelayo and the Christian resistance in the Asturias, and faces those he wronged, with the poet’s own notes.
Southey’s most admired long poem, written at Keswick between 1809 and 1814, for readers of Romantic epic. Download the free EPUB.