The war and waste of clashing creeds Now end in words, and not in deeds, And no one suffers loss, or bleeds, For thoughts that men call heresies.
"I stand without here in the porch, I hear the bell's melodious din, I hear the organ peal within, I hear the prayer, with words that scorch Like sparks from an inverted torch, I hear the sermon upon sin, With threatenings of the last account.
And all, translated in the air, Reach me but as our dear Lord's Prayer, And as the Sermon on the Mount.
"Must it be Calvin, and not Christ?
Must it be Athanasian creeds, Or holy water, books, and beads?
Must struggling souls remain content With councils and decrees of Trend?
And can it be enough for these The Christian Church the year embalms With evergreens and boughs of palms, And fills the air with litanies?
"I know that yonder Pharisee Thanks God that he is not like me;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 one, so terrible, perhaps 't were best If it, too, were forgotten with the rest;Unless, perchance, our eyes can see therein The martyrdom triumphant o'er the sin;A double picture, with its gloom and glow, The splendor overhead, the death below.
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 To some grand bull-fight in the neighboring town, Or in the crowd with lighted taper stand, When Jews were burned, or banished from the land.
Then stirred within him a tumultuous joy;The demon whose delight is to destroy Shook him, and shouted with a trumpet tone, Kill! kill! and let the Lord find out his own!"And now, in that old castle in the wood, His daughters, in the dawn of womanhood, Returning from their convent school, had made Resplendent with their bloom the forest shade, Reminding him of their dead mother's face, When first she came into that gloomy place,--A memory in his heart as dim and sweet As moonlight in a solitary street, Where the same rays, that lift the sea, 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 aware;He listened in the passage when they talked, He watched them from the casement when they walked, He saw the gypsy haunt the river's side, He saw the monk among the cork-trees glide;And, tortured by the mystery and the doubt Of some dark secret, past his finding out, Baffled he paused; then reassured again Pursued the flying phantom of his brain.
He watched them even when they knelt in church;And then, descending lower in his search, Questioned the servants, and with eager eyes Listened incredulous to their replies;The gypsy? none had seen her in the wood!
The monk? a mendicant in search of food!
At length the awful revelation came, Crushing at once his pride of birth and name;The hopes his yearning bosom forward cast, And the ancestral glories of the vast, All fell together, crumbling in disgrace, A turret rent from battlement to base.