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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=409626" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 1. The Theologian's Tale; Torquemada</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the heroic days when Ferdinand<br>And Isabella ruled the Spanish land,<br>And Torquemada, with his subtle brain,<br>Ruled them, as Grand Inquisitor of Spain,<br>In a great castle near Valladolid,<br>Moated and high and by fair woodlands hid,<br>There dwelt, as from the chronicles we learn,<br>An old Hidalgo proud and taciturn,<br>Whose name has perished, with his towers of stone,<br>And all his actions save this one alone;<br>This one, so terrible, perhaps 't were best<br>If it, too, were forgotten with the rest;<br>Unless, perchance, our eyes can see therein<br>The martyrdom triumphant o'er the sin;<br>A double picture, with its gloom and glow,<br>The splendor overhead, the death below. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">This sombre man counted each day as lost<br>On which his feet no sacred threshold crossed;<br>And when he chanced the passing Host to meet,<br>He knelt and prayed devoutly in the street;<br>Oft he confessed; and with each mutinous thought,<br>As with wild beasts at Ephesus, he fought.<br>In deep contrition scourged himself in Lent,<br>Walked in processions, with his head down bent,<br>At plays of Corpus Christi oft was seen,<br>And on Palm Sunday bore his bough of green.<br>His sole diversion was to hunt the boar<br>Through tangled thickets of the forest hoar,<br>Or with his jingling mules to hurry down<br>To some grand bull-fight in the neighboring town,<br>Or in the crowd with lighted taper stand,<br>When Jews were burned, or banished from the land.<br>Then stirred within him a tumultuous joy;<br>The demon whose delight is to destroy<br>Shook him, and shouted with a trumpet tone,<br>Kill! kill! and let the Lord find out his own!' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And now, in that old castle in the wood,<br>His daughters, in the dawn of womanhood,<br>Returning from their convent school, had made<br>Resplendent with their bloom the forest shade,<br>Reminding him of their dead mother's face,<br>When first she came into that gloomy place,--<br>A memory in his heart as dim and sweet<br>As moonlight in a solitary street,<br>Where the same rays, that lift the sea, are thrown<br>Lovely but powerless upon walls of stone.<br>These two fair daughters of a mother dead<br>Were all the dream had left him as it fled.<br>A joy at first, and then a growing care,<br>As if a voice within him cried, 'Beware!?<br>A vague presentiment of impending doom,<br>Like ghostly footsteps in a vacant room,<br>Haunted him day and night; a formless fear<br>That death to some one of his house was near,<br>With dark surmises of a hidden crime,<br>Made life itself a death before its time.<br>Jealous, suspicious, with no sense of shame,<br>A spy upon his daughters he became;<br>With velvet slippers, noiseless on the floors,<br>He glided softly through half-open doors;<br>Now in the room, and now upon the stair,<br>He stood beside them ere they were aware;<br>He listened in the passage when they talked,<br>He watched them from the casement when they walked,<br>He saw the gypsy haunt the river's side,<br>He saw the monk among the cork-trees glide;<br>And, tortured by the mystery and the doubt<br>Of some dark secret, past his finding out,<br>Baffled he paused; then reassured again<br>Pursued the flying phantom of his brain.<br>He watched them even when they knelt in church;<br>And then, descending lower in his search,<br>Questioned the servants, and with eager eyes<br>Listened incredulous to their replies;<br>The gypsy? none had seen her in the wood!<br>The monk? a mendicant in search of food! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">At length the awful revelation came,<br>Crushing at once his pride of birth and name;<br>The hopes his yearning bosom forward cast,<br>And the ancestral glories of the past,<br>All fell together, crumbling in disgrace,<br>A turret rent from battlement to base.<br>His daughters talking in the dead of night<br>In their own chamber, and without a light,<br>Listening, as he was wont, he overheard,<br>And learned the dreadful secret, word by word;<br>And hurrying from his castle, with a cry<br>He raised his hands to the unpitying sky,<br>Repeating one dread word, till bush and tree<br>Caught it, and shuddering answered, 'Heresy!' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Wrapped in his cloak, his hat drawn o'er his face,<br>Now hurrying forward, now with lingering pace,<br>He walked all night the alleys of his park,<br>With one unseen companion in the dark,<br>The demon who within him lay in wait,<br>And by his presence turned his love to hate,<br>Forever muttering in an undertone,<br>'Kill! kill! and let the Lord find out his own!' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Upon the morrow, after early Mass,<br>While yet the dew was glistening on the grass,<br>And all the woods were musical with birds,<br>The old Hidalgo, uttering fearful words,<br>Walked homeward with the Priest, and in his room<br>Summoned his trembling daughters to their doom.<br>When questioned, with brief answers they replied,<br>Nor when accused evaded or denied;<br>Expostulations, passionate appeals,<br>All that the human heart most fears or feels,<br>In vain the Priest with earnest voice essayed;<br>In vain the father threatened, wept, and prayed;<br>Until at last he said, with haughty mien,<br>'The Holy Office, then, must intervene!' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And now the Grand Inquisitor of Spain,<br>With all the fifty horsemen of his train,<br>His awful name resounding, like the blast<br>Of funeral trumpets, as he onward passed,<br>Came to Valladolid, and there began<br>To harry the rich Jews with fire and ban.<br>To him the Hidalgo went, and at the gate<br>Demanded audience on affairs of state,<br>And in a secret chamber stood before<br>A venerable graybeard of fourscore,<br>Dressed in the hood and habit of a friar;<br>Out of his eyes flashed a consuming fire,<br>And in his hand the mystic horn he held,<br>Which poison and all noxious charms dispelled.<br>He heard in silence the Hidalgo's tale,<br>Then answered in a voice that made him quail:<br>'Son of the Church! when Abraham of old<br>To sacrifice his only son was told,<br>He did not pause to parley nor protest,<br>But hastened to obey the Lord's behest.<br>In him it was accounted righteousness;<br>The Holy Church expects of thee no less!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A sacred frenzy seized the father's brain,<br>And Mercy from that hour implored in vain.<br>Ah! who will e'er believe the words I say?<br>His daughters he accused, and the same day<br>They both were cast into the dungeon's gloom,<br>That dismal antechamber of the tomb,<br>Arraigned, condemned, and sentenced to the flame,<br>The secret torture and the public shame.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then to the Grand Inquisitor once more<br>The Hidalgo went, more eager than before,<br>And said: 'When Abraham offered up his son,<br>He clave the wood wherewith it might be done.<br>By his example taught, let me too bring<br>Wood from the forest for my offering!'<br>And the deep voice, without a pause, replied:<br>'Son of the Church! by faith now justified,<br>Complete thy sacrifice, even as thou wilt;<br>The Church absolves thy conscience from all guilt!' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then this most wretched father went his way<br>Into the woods, that round his castle lay,<br>Where once his daughters in their childhood played<br>With their young mother in the sun and shade.<br>Now all the leaves had fallen; the branches bare<br>Made a perpetual moaning in the air,<br>And screaming from their eyries overhead<br>The ravens sailed athwart the sky of lead.<br>With his own hands he lopped the boughs and bound<br>Fagots, that crackled with foreboding sound,<br>And on his mules, caparisoned and gay<br>With bells and tassels, sent them on their way. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then with his mind on one dark purpose bent,<br>Again to the Inquisitor he went,<br>And said: 'Behold, the fagots I have brought,<br>And now, lest my atonement be as naught,<br>Grant me one more request, one last desire,--<br>With my own hand to light the funeral fire!'<br>And Torquemada answered from his seat,<br>'Son of the Church! Thine offering is complete;<br>Her servants through all ages shall not cease<br>To magnify thy deed. Depart in peace!' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Upon the market-place, builded of stone<br>The scaffold rose, whereon Death claimed his own.<br>At the four corners, in stern attitude,<br>Four statues of the Hebrew Prophets stood,<br>Gazing with calm indifference in their eyes<br>Upon this place of human sacrifice,<br>Round which was gathering fast the eager crowd,<br>With clamor of voices dissonant and loud,<br>And every roof and window was alive<br>With restless gazers, swarming like a hive. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The church-bells tolled, the chant of monks drew near,<br>Loud trumpets stammered forth their notes of fear,<br>A line of torches smoked along the street,<br>There was a stir, a rush, a tramp of feet,<br>And, with its banners floating in the air,<br>Slowly the long procession crossed the square,<br>And, to the statues of the Prophets bound,<br>The victims stood, with fagots piled around.<br>Then all the air a blast of trumpets shook,<br>And louder sang the monks with bell and book,<br>And the Hidalgo, lofty, stern, and proud,<br>Lifted his torch, and, bursting through the crowd,<br>Lighted in haste the fagots, and then fled,<br>Lest those imploring eyes should strike him dead! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">O pitiless skies! why did your clouds retain<br>For peasants' fields their floods of hoarded rain?<br>O pitiless earth! why open no abyss<br>To bury in its chasm a crime like this? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">That night a mingled column of fire and smoke<br>From the dark thickets of the forest broke,<br>And, glaring o'er the landscape leagues away,<br>Made all the fields and hamlets bright as day.<br>Wrapped in a sheet of flame the castle blazed,<br>And as the villagers in terror gazed,<br>They saw the figure of that cruel knight<br>Lean from a window in the turret's height,<br>His ghastly face illumined with the glare,<br>His hands upraised above his head in prayer,<br>Till the floor sank beneath him, and he fell<br>Down the black hollow of that burning well. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Three centuries and more above his bones<br>Have piled the oblivious years like funeral stones;<br>His name has perished with him, and no trace<br>Remains on earth of his afflicted race;<br>But Torquemada's name, with clouds o'ercast,<br>Looms in the distant landscape of the Past,<br>Like a burnt tower upon a blackened heath,<br>Lit by the fires of burning woods beneath!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Henry+Wadsworth+Longfellow">Henry Wadsworth Longfellow</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=409626" data-title="Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 1. The Theologian's Tale; Torquemada de Henry Wadsworth Longfellow" data-description="In the heroic days when Ferdinand
And Isabella ruled the Spanish land,
And Torquemada, with his subtle brain,
Ruled them, as Grand Inquisitor of Spain,
In a great castle near Valladolid,
Moated and high and by fair woodlands hid,
There dwelt, as f..."></div>
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