On magical horsemen

I was reading Pedro Calderón de la Barca's play The Surgeon of His Honour, and came across a magnificent description of a horseman seen from afar, given by the rider's former lover (who has not yet recognised him). It made me think of a strikingly similar, and equally lovely, speech from Shakespeare (with a less tragic ending). The context of the Shakespeare is that the crown prince has been pretending to squander his youth, the better to surprise his enemies, phoenix-like. So they are wholly blindsided by this report (from one of their own men) of his glorious preparation for battle.

The translation from Spanish in the first row is my own.

un bizarro caballero en un bruto tan ligero, que en el viento parecía          un pájaro que volaba; y es razón que lo presumas, porque un penacho de plumas matices al aire daba.          El campo y el sol en ellas compitieron resplandores; que el campo le dio sus flores, y el sol le dio sus estrellas;          porque cambiaban de modo, y de modo relucían, que en todo al sol parecían, y a la primavera en todo.         Corrió, pues, y tropezó el caballo, de manera que lo que ave entonces era, cuando en la tierra cayó        fue rosa; y así en rigor imitó su lucimiento en sol, cielo, tierra y viento, ave, bruto, estrella y flor.

A strange horseman, on a beast so light It seemed a bird in the wind; well might you think it, such a rainbowed plume it streaked through the air. The sun and field fought for brilliance in their aspect, now the field giving its flowers, now the sun its stars, And shone so that in whole they seemed the sun, and the spring of the whole. The horse ran; it tripped; So that he who had once been a bird, when he fell to the ground, seemed a rose. It glowed as the sun and sky, earth and wind, bird and beast, star and flower.

from Henry IV, Part 1 All furnish’d, all in arms; All plumed like estridges that with the wind Bated like eagles having lately bathed, Glittering in golden coats, like images, As full of spirit as the month of May, And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer; Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls. I saw young Harry with his beaver on, His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly arm’d, Rise from the ground like feather’d Mercury, And vaulted with such ease into his seat As if an angel dropp’d down from the clouds, To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus, And witch the world with noble horsemanship.