Tales of a Wayside Inn

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!"