In my humiliation dressed,

I only stand and beat my breast,
And pray for human charity.

"Not to one church alone, but seven,
The voice prophetic spake from heaven;
And unto each the promise came,
Diversified, but still the same;
For him that overcometh are
The new name written on the stone,
The raiment white, the crown, the throne,
And I will give him the Morning Star!

"Ah! to how many Faith has been
No evidence of things unseen,
But a dim shadow, that recasts
The creed of the Phantasiasts,
For whom no Man of Sorrows died,
For whom the Tragedy Divine
Was but a symbol and a sign,
And Christ a phantom crucified !

"For others a diviner creed
Is living in the life they lead.
The passing of their beautiful feet
Blesses the pavement of the street,
And all their looks and words repeat
Old Fuller's saying, wise and sweet,
Not as a vulture, but a dove,
The Holy Ghost came from above.

"And this brings back to me a tale
So sad the hearer well may quail,
And question if such things can be ;
Yet in the chronicles of Spain
Down the dark pages runs this stain,
And naught can wash them white again,
So fearful is the tragedy."

THE THEOLOGIAN'S TALE.

TORQUEMADA.

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 from the chronicles we learn,

An old Hidalgo proud and taciturn, Whose name has perished, with his towers of stone,

And all his actions save this one alone;

This sombre man counted each day as lost On which his feet no sacred threshold crossed;

And when he chanced the passing Host to meet,

He knelt and prayed devoutly in the street;

Oft he confessed; and with each mutinous thought,

As with wild beasts at Ephesus, he fought. In deep contrition scourged himself in Lent,

Walked in processions, with his head down bent,

At plays of Corpus Christi oft was seen, And on Palm Sunday bore his bough of green.

His sole diversion was to hunt the boar Through tangled thickets of the forest hoar,

Or with his jingling mules to hurry

down

are thrown

Lovely but powerless upon walls of stone. These two fair daughters of a mother dead

Were all the dream had left him as it fled.

A joy at first, and then a growing care, As if a voice within him cried, "Beware!"

A vague presentiment of impending doom,

Like ghostly footsteps in a vacant room, Haunted him day and night; a formless fear

That death to some one of his house was near,

With dark surmises of a hidden crime, Made life itself a death before its time. Jealous, suspicious, with no sense of shame,

A spy upon his daughters he became ; With velvet slippers, noiseless on the floors,

He glided softly through half-open doors; Now in the room, and now upon the stair,

He stood beside them ere they were

All fell together, crumbling in disgrace, A turret rent from battlement to base. His daughters talking in the dead of night

In their own chamber, and without a light,

Listening, as he was wont, he overheard, And learned the dreadful secret, word by word;

And hurrying from his castle, with a

food!

At length the awful revelation came, Crushing at once his pride of birth and

name;

The hopes his yearning bosom forward cast,

sayed; In vain the father threatened, wept, and prayed;

Until at last he said, with haughty mien,

"The Holy Office, then, must inter vene !"

And now the Grand Inquisitor of Spain, With all the fifty horsemen of his train, His awful name resounding, like the blast

Of funeral trumpets, as he onward passed,

Came to Valladolid, and there began To harry the rich Jews with fire and ban.

To him the Hidalgo went, and at the gate

Demanded audience on affairs of state,
And in a secret chamber stood before
A venerable graybeard of fourscore,
Dressed in the hood and habit of a friar;
Out of his eyes flashed a consuming fire,
And in his hand the mystic horn he
held,

Which poison and all noxious charms dispelled.

He heard in silence the Hidalgo's tale, Then answered in a voice that made him quail :

"Son of the Church! when Abraham of old

To sacrifice his only son was told,
He did not pause to parley nor protest,
But hastened to obey the Lord's behest.
In him it was accounted righteousness;
The Holy Church expects of thee no
less!"

A sacred frenzy seized the father's brain, And Mercy from that hour implored in

vain.

Ah! who will e'er believe the words I say?

His daughters he accused, and the same day

They both were cast into the dungeon's gloom,

That dismal antechamber of the tomb, Arraigned, condemned, and sentenced to the flame,

The secret torture and the public shame.

Then to the Grand Inquisitor once more The Hidalgo went, more eager than before,

And said: "When Abraham offered up

his son,

He clave the wood wherewith it might

be done.

By his example taught, let me too bring Wood from the forest for my offering! And the deep voice, without a pause, replied:

"Son of the Church! by faith now justified,

Complete thy sacrifice, even wilt;

as thou The Church absolves thy conscience from all guilt!"

Then this most wretched father went his way

Into the woods, that round his castle lay,

Where once his daughters in their childhood played

With their young mother in the sun and shade.

Now all the leaves had fallen; the branches bare

Made a perpetual moaning in the air, And screaming from their eyries overhead

The ravens sailed athwart the sky of lead.

With his own hands he lopped the boughs and bound

Fagots, that crackled with foreboding sound,

And on his mules, caparisoned and

gay

With bells and tassels, sent them on their way.

Then with his mind on one dark purpose bent,

Again to the Inquisitor he went, And said: "Behold, the fagots I have brought,

And now, lest my atonement be as naught,

Grant me one more request, one last desire,

With my own hand to light the funeral fire!'

And Torquemada answered from his seat,

"Son of the Church! Thine offering is complete;

Her servants through all ages shall not

cease

To magnify thy deed. Depart in peace!"

Upon the market-place, builded of stone The scaffold rose, whereon Death claimed

his own.

At the four corners, in stern attitude, Four statues of the Hebrew Prophets stood,

Gazing with calm indifference in their

eyes

Upon this place of human sacrifice, Round which was gathering fast the eager crowd,

With clamor of voices dissonant and loud,

And every roof and window was alive With restless gazers, swarming like a hive.

The church-bells tolled, the chant of monks drew near,

Loud trumpets stammered forth their notes of fear,

A line of torches smoked along the street,

There was a stir, a rush, a tramp of feet, And, with its banners floating in the air, Slowly the long procession crossed the

square,

And, to the statues of the Prophets bound,

The victims stood, with fagots piled around.

Then all the air a blast of trumpets shook,

And louder sang the monks with bell and book,

And the Hidalgo, lofty, stern, and proud,

Lifted his torch, and, bursting through the crowd,

Lighted in haste the fagots, and then fled,

Lest those imploring eyes should strike him dead!

O pitiless skies! why did your clouds retain

For peasants' fields their floods of hoarded rain?

O pitiless earth! why open no abyss To bury in its chasm a crime like this?

That night, a mingled column of fire and smoke

From the dark thickets of the forest broke,

And, glaring o'er the landscape leagues away,

Made all the fields and hamlets bright as day.

Wrapped in a sheet of flame the castle blazed,

And as the villagers in terror gazed, They saw the figure of that eruel knight

Lean from a window in the turret's height,

His ghastly face illumined with the glare,

His hands upraised above his head in prayer,

Till the floor sank beneath him, and he fell

Down the black hollow of that burning

well.

Three centuries and more above his bones

Have piled the oblivious years like funeral stones;

His name has perished with him, and

no trace

Remains on earth of his afflicted race; But Torquemada's name, with clouds o'ercast,

Looms in the distant landscape of the Past,

Like a burnt tower upon a blackened heath,

Lit by the fires of burning woods beneath!

INTERLUDE.

THUS closed the tale of guilt and gloom,

That cast upon each listener's face
Its shadow, and for some brief space
Unbroken silence filled the room.
The Jew was thoughtful and distressed;
Upon his memory thronged and pressed
The persecution of his race,
Their wrongs and sufferings and dis

grace;

His head was sunk upon his breast, And from his eyes alternate came Flashes of wrath and tears of shame.

The student first the silence broke,
As one who long has lain in wait,
With purpose to retaliate,
And thus he dealt the avenging stroke.
"In such a company as this,
A tale so tragic seems amiss,
That by its terrible control
O'ermasters and drags down the soul
Into a fathomless abyss.
The Italian Tales that you disdain,
Some merry Night of Straparole,
Or Machiavelli's Belphagor,

| Would cheer us and delight us more,

Give greater pleasure and less pain Than your grim tragedies of Spain !"

And here the Poet raised his hand, With such entreaty and command, It stopped discussion at its birth, And said: "The story I shall tell Has meaning in it, if not mirth; Listen, and hear what once befell The merry birds of Killingworth !"

THE POET'S TALE.

THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH.

IT was the season, when through all the land

The merle and mavis build, and build

ing sing

Those lovely lyrics, written by His hand, Whom Saxon Cædmon calls the Blitheheart King;

When on the boughs the purple buds expand,

The banners of the vanguard of the
Spring,

And rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap, And wave their fluttering signals from the steep.

The robin and the bluebird, piping loud, Filled all the blossoming orchards with their glee ;

The sparrows chirped as if they still were proud

Their race in Holy Writ should mentioned be;

And hungry crows assembled in a crowd, Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly,

Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said:

"Give us, O Lord, this day our daily bread!"