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 cruel 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!