MONTSERRAT.
O streams, and shades, and hills on high,
Unto the stillness of your breast
My wounded spirit longs to fly—
To fly and be at rest;
Thus from the world’s tempestuous sea,
O gentle Nature, do I turn to thee!
—Fray Luis de Leon.
No one visits Barcelona, or ought to visit it, without going to Montserrat, the sacred mountain of Spain, and one of the most extraordinary mountains in the world: the naturalist, to study its singular formation and the thousand varieties of its flora; the mere tourist, to visit its historic abbey and explore the wonderful grottoes with which the mountain is undermined; and the pilgrim, as to another Sinai, torn and rent asunder as by the throes of some new revelation, where amid awful rifts and chasms is enthroned its Syrian Madonna, like the impersonation of mercy amid the terrors of divine wrath. It is one of those wonderful places in Catholic Christendom around which centres the piety of the multitude. Hermits for ages have peopled its caves. The monks of St. Benedict for a thousand years have served its altars. Saints have kept watch around its venerable shrine. The kings and knights of chivalric Spain have come here with rich tributes to offer their vows. And the poor, with bare and bleeding feet, have, century after century, climbed its rough sides out of mere love for their favorite sanctuary.
Poets, too, have come here to seek inspiration. Several Spanish poets of note have celebrated its natural beauties and its legendary glory. Goethe could find no more suitable place than this wild, mysterious mountain for the scenery of one of the most wonderful parts of Faust—the scene where he makes the Pater Ecstaticus float in the golden air, the hermits chant from their mystic caves, and the bird-like voices of the spirits come between like the breathings of a wind-swept harp.[[25]]