Don Quixote's Song of Departure

This new castle, this new building,

enriched with marble and porphyry,

where love built a castle for his empire

and all of heaven added their skills,

a rampart, a fortress against vice,

is whose virtuous mistress hides herself away,

that the eye beholds and the spirit admires,

forcing hearts to her service.

It is a castle, made in such a way

that none may approach its door

unless he has saved his people from the Great Kings,

victorious, valiant and loving.

No knight, no matter how adventurous,

can enter without being such a person.