The Nun of Nidaros

In the convent of Drontheim,Alone in her chamberKnelt Astrid the Abbess,At midnight, adoring,Beseeching, entreatingThe Virgin and Mother.

She heard in the silenceThe voice of one speaking,Without in the darkness,In gusts of the night-windNow louder, now nearer,Now lost in the distance.

The voice of a strangerIt seemed as she listened,Of some one who answered,Beseeching, imploring,A cry from afar offShe could not distinguish.

The voice of Saint John,The beloved disciple,Who wandered and waitedThe Master's appearance.Alone in the darkness,Unsheltered and friendless.

"It is acceptedThe angry defianceThe challenge of battle!It is accepted,But not with the weaponsOf war that thou wieldest!

"Cross against corselet,Love against hatred,Peace-cry for war-cry!Patience is powerful;He that o'ercomethHath power o'er the nations!

"As torrents in summer,Half dried in their channels,Suddenly rise, though theSky is still cloudless,For rain has been fallingFar off at their fountains;

So hearts that are faintingGrow full to o'erflowing,And they that behold itMarvel, and know notThat God at their fountainsFar off has been raining!

"Stronger than steelIs the sword of the Spirit;Swifter than arrowsThe light of the truth is,Greater than angerIs love, and subdueth!

"Thou art a phantom,A shape of the sea-mist,A shape of the brumalRain, and the darknessFearful and formless;Day dawns and thou art not!

"The dawn is not distant,Nor is the night starless;Love is eternal!God is still God, andHis faith shall not fail usChrist is eternal!"

A strain of music closed the tale,A low, monotonous, funeral wail,That with its cadence, wild and sweet,Made the long Saga more complete.

"Thank God," the Theologian said,"The reign of violence is dead,Or dying surely from the world;While Love triumphant reigns instead,And in a brighter sky o'erheadHis blessed banners are unfurled.And most of all thank God for this:The war and waste of clashing creedsNow 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 scorchLike 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 contentWith councils and decrees of Trend?And can it be enough for theseThe Christian Church the year embalmsWith evergreens and boughs of palms,And fills the air with litanies?

"I know that yonder PhariseeThanks 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 areThe 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 beenNo evidence of things unseen,But a dim shadow, that recastsThe creed of the Phantasiasts,For whom no Man of Sorrows died,For whom the Tragedy DivineWas but a symbol and a sign,And Christ a phantom crucified!

"For others a diviner creedIs living in the life they lead.The passing of their beautiful feetBlesses the pavement of the streetAnd all their looks and words repeatOld 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 taleSo sad the hearer well may quail,And question if such things can be;Yet in the chronicles of SpainDown the dark pages runs this stain,And naught can wash them white again,So fearful is the tragedy."

In the heroic days when FerdinandAnd 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 bestIf it, too, were forgotten with the rest;Unless, perchance, our eyes can see thereinThe 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 lostOn 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 boarThrough tangled thickets of the forest hoar,Or with his jingling mules to hurry downTo 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 destroyShook 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 madeResplendent 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 sweetAs moonlight in a solitary street,Where the same rays, that lift the sea, are thrownLovely but powerless upon walls of stone.These two fair daughters of a mother deadWere 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, "BewareA vague presentiment of impending doom,Like ghostly footsteps in a vacant room,Haunted him day and night; a formless fearThat 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 doubtOf some dark secret, past his finding out,Baffled he paused; then reassured againPursued 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 eyesListened 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.His daughters talking in the dead of nightIn 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 cryHe raised his hands to the unpitying sky,Repeating one dread word, till bush and treeCaught it, and shuddering answered, "Heresy!"

Wrapped in his cloak, his hat drawn o'er his face,Now hurrying forward, now with lingering pace,He walked all night the alleys of his park,With one unseen companion in the dark,The Demon who within him lay in wait,And by his presence turned his love to hate,Forever muttering in an undertone,"Kill! kill! and let the Lord find out his own!"

Upon the morrow, after early Mass,While yet the dew was glistening on the grass,And all the woods were musical with birds,The old Hidalgo, uttering fearful words,Walked homeward with the Priest, and in his roomSummoned his trembling daughters to their doom.When questioned, with brief answers they replied,Nor when accused evaded or denied;Expostulations, passionate appeals,All that the human heart most fears or feels,In vain the Priest with earnest voice essayed;In vain the father threatened, wept, and prayed;Until at last he said, with haughty mien,"The Holy Office, then, must intervene!"

And now the Grand Inquisitor of Spain,With all the fifty horsemen of his train,His awful name resounding, like the blastOf funeral trumpets, as he onward passed,Came to Valladolid, and there beganTo harry the rich Jews with fire and ban.To him the Hidalgo went, and at the gateDemanded audience on affairs of state,And in a secret chamber stood beforeA 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 oldTo sacrifice his only son was told,He did not pause to parley nor protestBut 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 dayThey 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 moreThe 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 bringWood 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 as thou wilt;The Church absolves thy conscience from all guilt!"

Then this most wretched father went his wayInto the woods, that round his castle lay,Where once his daughters in their childhood playedWith their young mother in the sun and shade.Now all the leaves had fallen; the branches bareMade a perpetual moaning in the air,And screaming from their eyries overheadThe ravens sailed athwart the sky of lead.With his own hands he lopped the boughs and boundFagots, that crackled with foreboding sound,And on his mules, caparisoned and gayWith 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 ceaseTo magnify thy deed. Depart in peace!"

Upon the market-place, builded of stoneThe 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 eyesUpon 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 aliveWith 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 retainFor peasants' fields their floods of hoarded rain?O pitiless earth! why open no abyssTo bury in its chasm a crime like this?

That night a mingled column of fire and smokeProm 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 knightLean 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 fellDown the black hollow of that burning well.

Three centuries and more above his bonesHave piled the oblivious years like funeral stones;His name has perished with him, and no traceRemains 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!

Thus closed the tale of guilt and gloom,That cast upon each listener's faceIts shadow, and for some brief spaceUnbroken silence filled the room.The Jew was thoughtful and distressed;Upon his memory thronged and pressedThe persecution of his race,Their wrongs and sufferings and disgrace;His head was sunk upon his breast,And from his eyes alternate cameFlashes of wrath and tears of shame.

The student first the silence broke,As one who long has lain in waitWith 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 controlO'ermasters and drags down the soulInto 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 painThan 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 tellHas meaning in it, if not mirth;Listen, and hear what once befellThe merry birds of Killingworth!"