The Epic of Paul
by William Cleaver Wilkinson · English · Gutenberg #48309 · 717,271 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Epic of Paul
Author: William Cleaver Wilkinson
Release date: February 19, 2015 [eBook #48309]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EPIC OF PAUL ***
Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
* * * * *
THE EPIC OF PAUL
WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON
_Author of "The Epic of Saul"_
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1898
Copyright, 1897, by
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
[Registered at Stationers' Hall, London, England]
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Book I. PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT 9
Book II. PAUL AND GAMALIEL 43
Book III. SHIMEI AND THE CHILIARCH 77
Book IV. BY NIGHT FOR CÆSAREA 115
Book V. SHIMEI AND YOUNG STEPHEN 147
Book VI. PAUL BEFORE FELIX 167
Book VII. "TO CÆSAR" 193
Book VIII. SHIMEI BEFORE JULIUS 227
Book IX. PAUL AND YOUNG STEPHEN 257
Book X. RE-EMBARKED 291
Book XI. THE LAST OF SHIMEI 315
Book XII. PAUL AND KRISHNA 339
Book XIII. SHIPWRECK 363
Book XIV. MARY MAGDALENE 395
Book XV. YOUNG STEPHEN AND FELIX 425
Book XVI. INTERLUDE OF KRISHNA 453
Book XVII. THE STORY OF THE CROSS 485
Book XVIII. KRISHNA 507
Book XIX. BAPTISM OF KRISHNA 537
Book XX. EUTHANASY 569
Book XXI. ARRIVAL 597
Book XXII. DRUSILLA AND NERO 625
Book XXIII. NERO AND SIMON 661
Book XXIV. THE END 691
THE EPIC OF PAUL.
The action of THE EPIC OF PAUL begins with that conspiracy formed at
Jerusalem against the life of the apostle which in the sequel led to
a prolonged suspension of his free missionary career. It embraces
the incidents of his removal from Jerusalem to Cæsarea, of his
imprisonment at the latter place, of his journey to Rome for trial
before Cæsar, and of his final martyrdom.
The design of the poem as a whole is to present, through conduct on
Paul's part and through speech from him, a living portrait of the
man that he was, together with a reflex of his most central and most
characteristic teaching.
PROEM.
Paul, the new man, retrieved from perished Saul,
Unequalled good and fair, from such unfair,
Such evil, orient, miracle unguessed!--
Both what himself he was and what he taught--
This marvel in meet words to fashion forth
And make it live an image to the mind
Forever, blooming in celestial youth,
Were well despair to purer power than mine;
Help me Thou, Author of the miracle!
BOOK I.
PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT.
Paul is arraigned before the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem. He had the day
preceding been murderously set upon by a Jewish mob, from whose
hands he was with difficulty rescued by a Roman officer, to be held
as a prisoner supposed of infamous character. While Paul is thus
held, a conspiracy of desperate Jews is formed by Shimei against
his life. This conspiracy is fortunately discovered and exposed by
Stephen, a young nephew of the apostle, acting at the instance of
his mother Rachel, Paul's sister, and under the advice of Gamaliel,
Paul's old teacher.
THE EPIC OF PAUL.
PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT.
The Sanhedrim once more, with Saul arraigned,
Saul now no longer, and no longer young,
Paul his changed name, to note his nature changed.
Confronting frown on him, a prisoner,
Paul's colleagues of the days when he was Saul.
Shimei, with smile, or scowl, uncertain which,
Hatred and pleasure both at once expressed,
Pleasure of hatred gratified, with more
Hatred than could be wholly gratified--
His pristine aspect worse and worse deformed.
Sore vexed at heart were all the Sanhedrim
That now the victim of their wished despite--
Thrice the more hated as erst so beloved,
Christian apostate the once zealot Jew!--
Stood there but doubtfully within their power;
The Roman sway had cited him--and them.
For, yesterday, Paul in the temple-court
Had with fierce violence been set upon
By Jews who thought the holy place profaned
Through his unlawful bringing thither in
Of gentile Greeks--had there been set upon
And thence dragged forth with blows that purposed death.
But, as when Stephen suffered, so again
Now intervened the Roman, and this time
Forbade the turbulence and rescued Paul--
Rescued, but double-bound his hands with chains.
Demanding then who was the prisoner,
And what his crime, and nothing learning clear
Amid the hubbub loud of various charge,
The Roman chiliarch was conducting Paul
Into the castle, by the soldiers borne--
Hardly so wrested from the eager hands
Of those enraged who thirsted for his blood,
And rent the air crying, "Away with him!"--
When calmly to his captor-savior, he
Addressed himself and asked, "May I to thee
A few words speak?" "Greek understandest thou?"
Exclaimed the Roman. "Art thou then not he,
Not that Egyptian, who but late stirred up
Sedition, and into the wilderness
Led out a company four thousand strong
Of the Assassins?" "I a Hebrew am,"
Said Paul, "of Tarsus in Cilicia,
Of no mean city citizen. Let me,
I pray thee, speak unto the multitude."
Permitted, Paul, upon the castle stairs
Standing, stretched forth his hand in manacles
Unto the tumult surging at his feet,
And, a great silence fallen upon those waves,
Spoke in the Hebrew tongue to them and said:
"Brethren and fathers, my defence hear ye."
(The silence deepened at the Hebrew words.)
"A Jew am I, who, though in Tarsus born,
Was in this city bred and at the feet
Of that Gamaliel taught the ancestral law
With every scruple of severity,
Burning in zeal for God, as now do ye.
And I this Way hunted unto the death,
Sparing from chains and from imprisonment
Nor man nor woman. This will the high priest
Witness, and all the Jewish eldership.
By these commissioned, to Damascus I
Journeyed, that, thence even, I might hither bring
For punishment disciples of the Way.
And lo, as, journeying, nigh Damascus now
I drew, at noonday round about me shone
Suddenly a great light from heaven. To earth
Prostrate I fell, and heard a voice that said,
'Saul, Saul, why art thou persecuting me?'
'Thou, thou--who art thou, Lord?' I said. And He:
'Jesus I am, Jesus of Nazareth,
Whom thou art persecuting.' Those with me
Beheld indeed the light, but to the voice
That spake to me were deaf. And I then said,
'What wilt thou, Lord, that I should do?' 'Arise,'
Said He, 'and on into Damascus go;
What thou must do shall there to thee be told.'
Blind-smitten with the glory of the light,
Into Damascus guided by the hand
I came.
"There, Ananias, a devout
Observer of the law, of good renown
With all the Hebrew Damascenes, found me.
I felt him, though I saw him not, as he
Paused standing there before me, and these words
Spake: 'Brother Saul, receive thy sight.' And I,
That selfsame hour my sight receiving, fixed
My eyes on Ananias, when he said:
'The God of our forefathers hath of thee
Made choice His will to know and to behold
The Righteous One and from His mouth a voice
To hear. For, witness shalt thou be for Him
To all men of the things thou hast beheld
And heard. And now why lingerest thou? Arise
And be baptized and wash away thy sins,
Calling upon His name.'
"Thereafter I,
Unto Jerusalem returned, and here
Within the temple praying, into trance
Passed, and beheld Him, as to me He said:
'Haste, from Jerusalem to go make speed,
For witness will they not from thee receive
Concerning Me.' 'But, Lord,' said I, 'they know
Themselves how I, of all men I, imprisoned
And scourged from synagogue to synagogue
Them that on Thee believed. And when was shed
Thy martyr Stephen's blood, I, also I,
Stood near, consenting, and their garments kept
Who slew him.' But the Lord to me replied:
'Depart, for I will send thee forth far hence
In mission to the Gentiles--"
To this word
The throng to Paul gave patient ear, but now--
At sign and instigation, ambushed erst
In waiting for the moment meet to spring,
And springing pregnant from the ready wit
Of Shimei, when that hateful hint was heard
Of mission to the Gentiles through a Jew--
Rose an uproar of voices from the crowd,
As when winds mingle sea and sky in storm.
"Away with such a fellow from the earth!"
They cried; "it is not fit that he should live."
A wild scene, for with outcry wild was mixed
Wild gesture; the whole madding multitude
Rent off their raiment, and into the air
Dust flung in cloud as where a whirlwind roars.
Astonished stood the chiliarch at the sight,
Nor doubted that some monster was the man
Against whom such a storm of clamor raged.
He bade bring Paul within the castle, there
Bade scourge him that he might his crime confess.
Already they had bound him for the thongs,
When Paul to the centurion standing by
Said, "Is it lawful for you then to scourge
A man that is a Roman--uncondemned?"
This the centurion hearing, straightway he
Went to the chiliarch and abrupt exclaimed:
"What is it thou art on the point to do?
For this man is a Roman." Then to Paul
Hastens the chiliarch and, perturbed, inquires:
"Tell me, art thou a Roman?" "Yea," said Paul.
Surprised, incredulous half, the chiliarch cried:
"I with an ample sum that franchise bought."
"But I," calmly said Paul, "was thereto born."
At that word from their prisoner, the men
Who ready round him stood the lash to ply
Instantly vanished, and the chiliarch too
Was panic-stricken--now in doubt no more
That Paul a Roman was, whom he had bound
For stripes, against a law greater than he,
Nay, sacred as the sacred majesty
Itself of the Republic--ancient name
Disguising empire!--law forbidding stripes
On any flesh that Roman title owned.
Paul slept, in Roman chains, the Christian's sleep,
That night, but ill at ease the chiliarch tossed
In troubled slumbers. He, with early morn,
To council called the Jewish Sanhedrim,
Set Paul unbound before them, and so sought
The truth to know of what on him was charged.
With calmly steadfast eye Paul faced his foes,
But Shimei smiled in confidence of guile;
Whatever the accused might seek to say,
Affront should meet him and torment his pride.
Paul, his fixed eyes pointing his moveless aim
Full in the faces of the elders, said:
"Brethren, in all good conscience have I lived
In loyalty toward God unto this day."
On such a claim from such a prisoner,
Angry the high priest Ananias cried,
"Smite him upon the mouth!" to those near by.
Paul flamed in answering righteous wrath, and said,
Flashing a lightning from his eyes on him:
"Smite thee shall God, thou whited wall! And thou,
Sittest thou here to judge me by the law,
And, the law breaking, biddest me be smitten?"
The bolted word had flown and found its mark,
And Paul stood quivering with the stern recoil.
But the bystanders, tools of Shimei,
In chorus of well-simulated zeal
Of reverence toward authority, cried out:
"The high priest, then, of God revilest thou?"
Tempting the outraged man to further vent
Volcanic of resentment at his wrong.
But Paul had tutored down his rebel will;
Meekly he said: "Brethren, I did not know
That he the high priest was, for it is writ,
'Of one that rules thy people speak not ill.'"
Through such self-recollection and self-rule,
Paul, master of himself once more become,
Became likewise master of circumstance.
Marking that Pharisee and Sadducee
Made up the assembly, he, with prudent choice,
As Pharisee to Pharisee appealed.
"Brethren," he cried, "a Pharisee am I,
From Pharisees descended; for the hope
And resurrection of the dead it is
That I this day am judged."
Discord hereon
Arose of Pharisee with Sadducee,
Which atwain rent the whole assembly there.
For Sadducee no resurrection owned,
No angel, and no spirit; Pharisee
These all confessed. A hideous clamor grew,
And certain scribes, who with the Pharisees
Sided, rose and, contending stoutly, said:
"No evil find we in this man; and if,
And if so be indeed, there hath to him
A spirit spoken, or an angel--" Thus
A hot dissension waxing, and afraid
Become the chiliarch lest his prisoner be
In sunder torn, the soldiery he sent
To pluck him from amidst the wrangling crowd,
And lodge him in the castle.
The next night
The Lord stood in theophany by Paul,
And said: "Be of good cheer; as thou of me
Hast witnessed in Jerusalem, so must
Thou also yet witness in Rome." And Paul
Was of good cheer in glad obedience,
And slept a sleep so leavened with happy dream.
But night-long lonely vigil Shimei kept,
Stung from repose to study of revenge.
At dawn, his hatch of hell, quick by the heat
Of brooding hatred in that patient breast,
Was ready to come forth and stalk abroad.
'Death to apostate Saul!' his public word,
'Death to that hated man!' was Shimei's thought.
Thought not so much, as law to him of thought,
Which formed and fixed the habit of the mind;
His thought was simply, 'How to get Paul slain,'
His feeling was a hatred bent to slay;
Now, bent to slay; once, but to torture bent.
This, partly because hatred is like love
Herein, that it, by only being, grows--
Until, at last, usurping quite the man,
It overgrows him like a polypus;
And partly because plot and act of hate
Sting to find hateful more the hated one,
Hate against whom is so self-justified.
But Shimei's hate of Paul, antipathy
At first, deep, primal, irreversible,
A doom born in him when himself was born,
And thence--from that time forth when in the hall
Of council Saul disdained and flouted him--
A conscious, fostered, festering grudge become--
This hate, now grown by but persisting long,
And much more grown through long self-exercise,
Had yet, beyond the private argument,
Its public ground of warrant for itself.
Mocker though Shimei was, not less was he,
To his full measure of sincerity,
Sincerely in his mockery a Jew;
His nation's scorn of Jesus was his scorn,
And who loved Jesus for that cause he hated.
Buoyed and supported by the spirit rife,
The common conscience, of his countrymen,
Nay, conscious of approval and acclaim
Without him, as of genius blithe within
Him, prompt to indirection and deceit,
Shimei, far more than clear and confident,
Felt also something of the fowler's joy
In cunning, as for Paul his toils he spread.
All this; yet all was not enough to fire
The hate that burned sevenfold in Shimei's breast.
With all, there was an alien element
Infused, Tartarean fuelling from beneath,
A breath of hell to blow his hate so hot.
No merely human hatred crucified
The Lord of glory and the Lord of love!
No merely human hatred followed Paul
On his angelic errand round the world,
With scourge, with ambush, with imprisonment,
And mouth agape to drink that holy blood!
Forty fanatic Jews were quickly found
To bind themselves by a religious oath
Of dreadful imprecation on their heads
Neither to eat nor drink till Paul was slain.
Prompt chance to slay him Shimei promised them;
He would procure that, on the morrow morn,
The chiliarch should desire to quit his doubt
Concerning his strange prisoner, by one more
Test of his cause before the Sanhedrim.
Then, while from the near tower Antonia, Saul
At leisure to their council-hall was brought,
So large a number of sworn arms in league
Might easily, with rash violence, breach their way
To him amid his guard of soldiery,
And, far too suddenly for these to fend,
Spill his life-blood like water on the ground--
Whence could not all the power of Rome again
Gather it up to store his veins withal.
So Shimei plotted, with the guile of hate;
But, with a wiser guile, the guile of love,
There counterplotted a true heart for Paul.
Rachel that ministry of grace had plied
For Ruth by Saul imprisoned, and for those
Of Bethany bound with her--where, meanwhile,
She for Ruth's children happy kept their home--
Month after month, with inexhaustible
Sweet patience and bright heart of hope and brave,
Until, the soul of persecution slain
In Saul converted, they were all let go
Beneath their wonted roofs at peace to dwell;
Rachel first welcoming Ruth safe home once more,
And Ruth then welcoming Rachel still to bide.
But Lazarus, toward Rachel, to and fro
Daily seen moving, with that punctual truth
To tryst so beautiful, more beautiful
In her who was herself so beautiful,
Whose every step, look, gesture, and least speech,
Or very silence, seemed a benison--
Toward Rachel, such beheld--a crescent dawn
Brightening upon him to the perfect day,
Apocalypse of lovely--Lazarus,
In secret, more and more felt his heart drawn,
Through all the dreaming hours he passed in prison.
Released at last, he told his heart to her,
And Rachel learned to yield him love for love;
So, Saul consenting gladly, they were wed.
The eldest-born of Rachel now was grown
A stripling youth, in face and person fair,
Fair spoken, with a winning gift of grace
In manner, and a conscious innocence,
Becoming conscious virtue, written free
In legend over all his lineaments,
Where beamed likewise a bright intelligence,
Alert, beyond such years, with exercise;
For Rachel's had been long a widow's child,
And long that widow's only, as her first.
Stephen they had named their boy--for memory.
It still was dark, deep dark before the dawn,
When Rachel rose from wrestling sleepless dream
To rouse her son from happy dreamless sleep.
"Stephen," said she, "my son, my heart divines
Danger nigh imminent for one we love."
"But, mother," said the son, "mine uncle Paul,
If him thou meanest, is safe in citadel.
Those Romans, heathen though they be, and void
Of pity as the nether millstone is,
Are yet in their hard way, and heathen, just.
They have the power, as they have shown the will,
To keep thy brother hedged from Hebrew hate."
"From Hebrew hate, but not from hellish guile,"
Rachel replied; "and hellish guile, my son,
Thy mother's heart, quickened with sisterhood,
And, from some sad experience of the world,
Suspicious--nay, perhaps, through deep divine
Persuasion by the Holy Spirit wrought,
Intuitive of the future, and on things
Else hidden, inly privileged to look--
Yea, hellish guile, my heart, somehow advised,
Insists and still insists she knows, she feels,
This hour at work against my brother Saul.
Haste, get thee quickly to Gamaliel--
Brief his sleep is, and he will be awake,
For, with his gathering years, now nigh five score,
Lighter and lighter grow his slumbers, ever
Broken and scattered by the first cockcrow--
Greet him from me with worship as beseems,
And, telling him my fears, entreat to know
If aught that touches his old pupil Saul,
Haply an issue from the brooding brain
Of Shimei to Saul's hurt, have reached his ear.
Be wise, be wary, Stephen, whet thy sense,
Fail not to see or hear whatever sign
Glimpses or whispers, smallest hint that may
Concern the safety of thine uncle Saul.
How knowest thou but thy scouting walk this morn
Shall rescue to the world, in need so deep,
Yet many a year of that apostleship?
Besides, with such a sun quenched from our sky,
What then were day prolonged but night to us?
Go, and thy mother here meanwhile will pray:
'Lord, speed my son, make him discreet and brave!'"
Brave and discreet the boy had need to be;
For, as he went, amid the rear-guard dense
Of darkness undispersed before the dawn,
Steering his flying steps along the street,
And watching wary, with tense eye and ear,
To every quarter of the dim dumb world--
A sudden thwarting ray that disappeared!
He paused on tiptoe, leaning forward, stood
One instant, with his hand behind his ear,
To listen, while his noisy heart he hushed;
And heard, yea, footsteps, with a muffled sound
Of human voices sibilant and hoarse.
What meant it? Nothing, doubtless, yet well were
To be unseen, and see--if see he might--
And hear unheard, until his way were sure.
With supple swift insinuation, he
Slipped him beneath the slack ungathered length
Of a chance-left rolled tent-cloth at his feet.
Two men--one bore a lantern, darkened deep
Behind the outer garment that he wore--
Drew nigh, and Stephen held his breath to hear
The name of Saul hissed out between the twain.
Slow was their gait, and ever and anon,
Halting, they checked their words, and seemed to list,
As if for comrades lingering yet behind.
They against Stephen halted thus, and he
Lay breathlessly awaiting what might fall.
First having paused, as hearkening from afar--
To naught but silence--the two men sat down
Upon that roll of tent-cloth, thus at ease
To rest them, till the waited-for appeared.
At Stephen's very ear, he in duress
And forced to hear them, there those two ill men,
Complotters in the plot to murder Paul,
Unfolded in free converse all their scheme.
Fiercely the listening boy forbade to cry
The aching heart of eagerness in him,
That almost rived with its desire of vent.
Fear for himself could not have held him mute;
Horror and hatred of that wickedness
Swelled swiftly in his breast, so huge and hard,
There must have sprung from out his lips a cry,
Sharp like an arrow cleaving from its string,
Had not great love been instant, stronger yet,
Binding his heart to burst not, and be dumb.
So there he lay as dead, so deathlike still,
Until at length--the waited-for come up--
They all went forward thence their purposed way.
Then Stephen lithely to his feet upsprung
And, sped as with his anguish, his disdain,
His indignation, to be silent--force
Pent up in him from all escape but speed--
Swift, like the roe upon the mountains, ran
To find Gamaliel, where that ancient sage
Sat on his dewy roof expecting morn.
"Rachel my mother sends Gamaliel hail,
And bids me haste to bring thee instant word!"
So Stephen, with quick-beating heart that broke
His words to pulses of sobbed sound, began:
"She says--but I, in hither coming, learned
More than my mother charged me with to thee.
Lo, wicked men of our own nation plot
This day to shed my mother's brother's blood.
They will desire the Roman to send down
Mine uncle Saul before the Sanhedrim,
To be by these examined once again;
But they will set upon him while he comes,
And so, or ever he can rescued be,
Make of mine uncle Saul a bloody corpse.
O Rabbi, master of mine uncle Saul,
Beseech thee, speak, bid me, what must I do?"
The old man bent upon the boy his brow,
And, slowly rousing without motion, said:
"The world grows gray in wickedness, my son;
What the Lord God of all intends, who knows?
Most wise is He, but deep, in many ways,
Past human finding out. Thine uncle Saul
Is hated for himself by Shimei
Yet more than for his cause. And Shimei
Is doubtless the artificer of this."
With inward adjuration then, a hand
Uplifted as in gesture to repel,
Gamaliel deeply added, "O my soul,
Into the secret of such man come not!"
Wherewith the aged tremulous lips were mute,
Though mutely moving still, as if the words
Said themselves over, again and yet again,
Within him, of that ancient fending spell.
Stephen, well-schooled in awe of the hoar head,
Stood an uneasy instant silent, then
Yielded to his untamable desire
Of action and impatience of delay.
"O Rabban," he importunately cried,
"But thy young servant's soul already God
Into the secret of this man has brought--
Doubtless to baffle him--knew I but how!"
"Yea, verily, Stephen; also that might chance,"
Gamaliel answered with benignity;
He almost let grave admiration breathe,
Through softly-lighted look and gentle tone,
A kind of benediction on the boy,
As he, unhastened, felt the youthful haste
That made the stripling Stephen beautiful;
"For David was a shepherd lad, when he
Was chosen of God to lay Goliath low.
Who knows but thou shalt save thine uncle Saul?
I loved him long ago--when thou wast not;
He went his way, and I abode in mine,
Ways widely parting, but I love him still.
And I would see him yet before I die.
Tell him, Gamaliel would see Saul once more.
Perhaps, perhaps, I might dissuade him yet.
Thine uncle, lad, was ever from a youth
Headstrong to think his thought and will his will.
No man might bend him from his own fixed bent;
If any man, then I; he honored me,
And hearkened reason from Gamaliel's lips.
Yea, send Saul hither, I would prove if I
Have not still left some saving power for him."
Gamaliel spoke half as from reverie,
Lapsed in oblivion of the present need.
"Rabban Gamaliel," bold upspoke the boy,
"Thy saving power I pray thee now put forth
To pluck mine uncle from the jaws of death.
I promise gladly then to bring thee Saul,
If so I may, when, by thy counsel, I
Have set him safe from those that seek his blood.
These have their mouth agape already now,
Their throat an open sepulcher for him.
I see, I see them spring upon their prey--
O master, master, must he die like this?"
The passionate pleading boy dropped on his knees,
And the knees clasped of the thus roused old man.
"Yea, I remember," now Gamaliel spoke;
"Weep not, my boy, but haste, my bidding do."
Therewith Gamaliel clapped his aged hands,
When instantly a servant to his call
Stood on the roof with, "Master, here am I."
"An inkhorn and a pen, with parchment; speed!"
Shot from Gamaliel's lips, so short, so sharp
With instance, that the man not went, but flew.
"Make thou a table of my knees, and write,"
Gamaliel to forestalling Stephen said;
"Write: 'I, Gamaliel, send this lad to thee;
I know him; he will tell thee what concerns
Thy hearing; thou canst trust him all in all.'
There, so is well; now superscribe it fair:
'To the chief captain of Antonia.'
Run, carry this--stay, I must sign it first
With mine own hand for certainty to him.
Up, haste thee to the castle, ask for Saul,
Him tell what thou hast learned, and show him this;
Saul will to the chief captain get thee brought,
And thou hereby shalt win believing heed.
No thanks, and no farewell, but thy feet wing!"
So sped, but of his own heart better sped,
Stephen quick got him to the castle gate,
Where, with Gamaliel's seal displayed--his truth,
Patent in face and voice, admitting him--
He gained prompt privilege of speech with Paul.
Paul heard the tidings that his nephew brought
And, summoning a centurion, said to him:
"Pray thee, to the chief captain take this youth;
He has a matter for his private ear."
So the centurion, taking Stephen, went
To the chief captain, and thus spoke to him:
"The prisoner Paul bade me to him and asked
That I would bring this youth to thee, who has
A certain matter he would tell thee of."
The chiliarch looked at Stephen glowing there
Before him in the beauty of his youth,
A beauty that was more than beauty now,
Touched and illumined into nobleness
By the pure ardor of the soul within
Kindling upon the face in flames of zeal--
The Roman, on the boy ennobled so
Feasting his eye a moment in fixed gaze,
Caught the contagion of that nobleness.
A waft perhaps of reminiscence waked
Blew soft and warm upon his heart from Rome;
Clear in the mirror of the Hebrew boy
Shining in sudden apparition so,
Fairer than fountain of Bandusia,
There swam perhaps an image to the eye
Of that stern Roman father, dear with home;
Perhaps he thought of a young Claudius,
Who, far away beneath Italian skies,
Was blooming crescent in a grace like that,
His father exile in Jerusalem!
However wrought on, Claudius Lysias,
Touched somehow to a mood of gentleness,
Took Stephen by the hand and went with him
Apart a little into privacy,
And said: "And now, my pretty Hebrew lad,
What matter is it thou hast hither brought?"
"O, sir," said Stephen, with half-downcast face
Of beautifying shame that he must bear
Such witness unto Roman against Jew,
"There are some Israelites not of Israel;
Pray thee, judge not my race by this that I
Must tell thee of my wicked countrymen.
Forty vile men have in Jerusalem,
By one the vilest who knows all the vile,
Been found to bind themselves by oath in league
Together all, under a dreadful curse,
Neither to eat nor drink, till they the best,
The noblest, of their countrymen have slain
Thy prisoner Paul. These presently will ask,
Or others speaking for them will--high climbs,
Sir, and wide spreads, this foul conspiracy
Of evil against good, among the Jews--
They soon will ask that thou to-morrow bring
Thy prisoner before the Sanhedrim
As of his cause to certify thyself.
But, while he comes, those base complotters will,
Lying in wait for this, upon him fall
Too quickly for the soldiers to forefend,
And slay him as beneath thy very eyes.
O, sir, do not thou give them their desire."
"Thou lookest truth, my boy," the chiliarch said;
"But a mad bloody plot thou warnest me of.
Thou knowest these things? But how these things knowest thou?
And how shall _I_ know that thou knowest these things?
How, too, that thou speakest truly as thou knowest?'
"My mother is Paul's sister," Stephen said,
"And she, all in her secret heart, divined
Some mischief that impended over him,
And bade me hasten to the wise and good
Gamaliel, counsellor to her and all,
And ask if he knew aught, or aught advised,
That touched the safety of her brother; he
Was once Gamaliel's pupil well-beloved.
It came to pass, as I devoured my way
Through the deep dark before the earliest dawn,
Whetted to heed whatever might be sign
Of import to the purpose I would serve,
That a low noise of voices, and a ray,
Shot, so it after proved, athwart the night
From out a lantern, for an instant bare,
That some one carried underneath his robe,
And, by pure hap, or haply for a hint
From far to comrade, or to light his course,
Let shine that moment through the parted folds--
It chanced, I say, that such a sudden sign--
For sign I found it--made me haste to hide
Where I, unmarked, might mark, both eye and ear.
O, sir, God sent those wicked twain so nigh
Me I could plainly hear them, every word,
Unfold the counsel of their wickedness.
As soon as freed by their departure, I
Flew to Gamaliel, told him all, from him
At last received instruction and strict charge
To hasten hither, seek out Paul, access
Secure through him to thee, and in thine hand
Give this, Gamaliel's word, for proof of me."
Stephen stood silent, and the chiliarch read;
"Aye, as I thought," he slowly, musing, spoke;
"I did not doubt thy truth, my boy, before,
I myself did not, though the chiliarch did,
As by his office bound to scruple deep,
And ever doubt, till doubt by proof be quelled.
This well agrees with the wild, heady way
Of the whole restless, reckless race of Jews.
They count no cost, of peril, or of pain,
Loss, labor, naught; impossibility
Is but temptation to attempt--in vain.
Was never city like Jerusalem,
Menace of mob in every multitude!
Well, well, my lad, I trust thee, go thy way,
Say naught of this to any one abroad;
I will take care no harm shall happen Paul.
Thou hast well done to bring this word to me;
I should have felt it for a vexing thing
Had thus a Roman in my custody
Disgracefully been slain with violent hands.
But thou it seems lovest thy kinsman Paul;
Now for thy youth, and for thy comely face,
And for the service thou hast wrought for me,
I give thee thy request, what wilt thou have?
Be prudent, so that I need not repent,
And, so that thou need not repent, be bold.
Ask widely, wisely, for thine uncle Paul."
"I thank thee, sir, for this thy grace to me,"
Said Stephen; "but for Paul I nothing ask,
Sure as I am he has what he desires;
For he has learned in whatsoever state
He be, therein to be content--so I
Have heard mine uncle say, in telling what,
Strange hap and hard to me it often seemed,
Has him befallen in wandering through the world.
Still, if I might two things in one desire,
Though not for Paul, yet partly for his sake,
I this would crave from thee, that I may here
Bide with mine uncle, or with, him go hence,
If hence thou sendest him; that is one thing;
And this the other is, that I may bid
Gamaliel hither, here to visit Paul.
Gamaliel wishes to see Paul once more,
And Paul I know would gladly yet again
Greet his belovéd master face to face.
Doubtless the last time it will be to them;
For he, Gamaliel, waxes very old,
Almost five score the tale is of his years."
"Thou askest little; all is granted thee,"
The Roman said, and that centurion charged:
"Let this lad come and go, unchecked, at will,
Or bide companion with the prisoner Paul."
"And thou, my little Hebrew," added he,
Apart, "behooves thou know the time is short
For Paul to tarry in Antonia.
This very night, I send him forth with haste
To Cæsarea from Jerusalem;
Both for his safety, and my quiet, this.
Thou shalt go with him, if thou choose to go.
Remember that I trust thee, and be dumb."
Benignantly dismissed thus, Stephen first
Home hied him to his mother Rachel, her
Told what had fallen and comforted her heart;
Then to Gamaliel bore the chiliarch's word,
Bidding him freely come to visit Paul.
BOOK II.
PAUL AND GAMALIEL.
The aged Gamaliel has his wish and enjoys a prolonged interview with
the prisoner Paul in the castle where the latter is confined--young
Stephen being present. The result is Gamaliel's conversion to
Christianity; but this is followed by the old man's peaceful death
on the couch where he had been resting while he talked. So peaceful
is the death that, in the darkness of the late evening, Paul and
young Stephen are not aware that it has occurred.
PAUL AND GAMALIEL.
His eye now dim, as too his natural force
Abated--for the long increase of years,
Each lightly like a gentle white snow-shower
Descending on his shoulders scarcely felt,
Grew a great weight at length that his tall form
Stooped, and his steps made gradually slow--
Gamaliel, stayed in hand by Stephen, walked,
Gazed on of all with worship where he passed
Gathering the salutations of the street,
Meet revenue of his reverend age and fame,
Until he entered at Antonia gate.
Paul met his master with a welcoming kiss,
Then led him forward to a couch, whereon
The aged man his limbs to rest composed.
There kneeling by him, Paul upon his neck
Wept in warm tears the pathos of his love.
"O great and gentle master of my youth,
Rabban Gamaliel, Saul, in many things
Other than he was erst, is still the same
In his old love and loyalty to thee!"
Such words Paul found, when he his heart could tame
From inarticulate passion into speech.
"Yea, changed, my son, in many things art thou,"
Gravely Gamaliel framed reply to Paul,
"In many things changed, and in some things much.
Thou too, my son, art older grown, like me--
Nay, like me, not. Thou art but older; I,
Past being older, now am truly old.
Yet old art thou beyond thy proper years;
Life has been more than lapse of time to thee,
To bleach the youthful raven of thy locks
To such a whiteness as of whited wool;
And all thine aspect is of winter age,
Closed without autumn on short summer time.
It should not grieve me, but indeed it grieves,
To see thee thus before thy season old.
I could have wished to live myself in thee,
Hereafter, a long life of use again,
As that good Hillel lived--not worthily--
Again in me, Gamaliel, hastening hence,
I now, less happy, none inheriting me.
As my soul's son, O Saul, I counted thee,
Thee, chosen of all my pupils to such kin;
That thou, of all, shouldst separate thyself
From the good part, and from thy father's side,
To choose thy lot with aliens and with foes!
What ruin of what hope! Already now,
The prime, the flower, the glory, of the strength
Unmatchable for promise that was Saul,
Spent, squandered, irrecoverably waste!
Nor this even yet the worst; for, worse than waste,
Saul has all used to rend what was to mend,
To scatter what to gather need was sore,
And what asked wise upbuilding to pull down.
O Saul, Saul, Saul, my son, what hast thou wrought!
O Israel, O my people, this from Saul!"
The old man shook, ceasing, with tearless sobs,
And in hands trembling hid his face from Paul.
Paul silently a moment bowed himself--
Like blinded Samson leaning hard against
The pillars of the palace of the lords
Philistine, so Paul bowed himself against
The pillars of Gamaliel's house of trust,
In one great throe and agony of prayer;
Then said: "O thou hoar head most reverend,
My master, how those words of thine pierce me!
Far, far more easily have I born all ills,
Though many and heavy, that on me have fallen,
Than now such words I hear of pained reproach,
Thrice grievous as thus gracious, from thy lips.
How shall I find wherewith to answer thee?
I think thou knowest, my master, that I love
My nation, and a thousand times would die
To save from death my kindred in the flesh.
Not willingly do I seem even to rend
The oneness of my people so asunder.
Scatter I do not, if I seem to scatter:
I sift and choose, and cast the bad away;
That is not scattering, it is gathering rather.
Nor is it I do this, but by me God.
Reprobate silver still some souls will be,
And rightly so men call them, for the Lord,
He hath rejected them, the judging Lord.
This is that word of Malachi fulfilled--
Whom also thou, O master, once, inspired
Perhaps, beyond our dreaming, from the Lord,
Recalledst, when our seventy elders sat
Consulting how most prudently they might
Slay those apostles of the Nazarene.
Thou warnedst us more wisely than our hearts
Were meekly wise enough, enough to heed.
For, 'The Lord cometh,' saidst thou then, and, 'Who
Of us,' thou askedst, 'who of us shall bide
The day of that approach?' 'Not surely he,'
Thou answeredst, prophet-wise, 'surely not he,
Then found in arms against God and His Christ.'
And did not Malachi foretell that He,
The Angel of the covenant, should sit
As a refiner and a purifier,
To purge the sons of Levi of their dross?
So sits He now, attending in the heavens,
Until appear a people purified,
Israel gathered out of Israel,
A chosen peculiar people for Himself.
"Thou knowest how I hated once this name,
And persecuted to the death His church.
I raged against Jehovah; mad and blind,
On the thick bosses of His buckler rushed.
But He, Jehovah, met me in the way
With His sword drawn and slew me where I stood.
One stroke, like living lightning, and I fell;
Saul was no more, but in his stead was Paul."
Paul therewith paused, awaiting; for he saw
A motion change the listener's attitude.
Gamaliel turned toward Paul, and looked at him,
A grave, a sad, inquiry in the gaze.
"What dost thou mean?" almost severely he,
With something of his magisterial wont,
Inveterate, in the gesture of his eye
And in his tone expressed, now said to Paul:
"What dost thou mean? Thou riddlest thus with me.
The Lord slew thee, then made alive again
Not thy slain self, but some new other man!
Meet is it thou shouldst speak in parable
Thus to thy master in his hoary age?
Plain, and forthwith, what meanest thou, son Saul?"
"I would not vex with darkened words thine ear,
My master," gently deprecated Paul;
"But otherwise how can I, than in words
Dark-seeming, frame of things ineffable
Shadow or image only? God revealed
His Son in me; thenceforth no longer I
Lived, but Christ in me. I am not myself.
The self that once was I, was crucified
With Jesus on that cross, with Jesus then
Was buried, and with Jesus rose again,
To be forever other than before.
"I journeyed to Damascus glorying,
In my old heart, the heart thou knewest for Saul,
Against the name, and those that owned the name,
Of Jesus, to destroy them from the earth.
But Jesus, in a terror of great light,
Met me and smote me prostrate on the ground.
A voice therewith I heard, the voice was wide,
And all my members seemed one ear to hear
That voice, which shone too, like the light around
Me that had quenched the midday sun; it pressed
At every pore with importunity
So dreadful that the world became a sound:
'Saul, Saul, why art thou persecuting me?'
'Who art thou, Lord?' my trembling flesh inquired.
'Jesus I am whom thou dost persecute,'
I heard through all my members in reply.
"I cannot tell thee, master, how my soul,
All naked of its flesh investiture,
Lay quivering to the touch of sight and sound.
Into annihilation crushed, my pride,
My pride, my hate, the fury of my zeal,
The folly and the fury of my zeal
Against God and His Christ, were not, and I
Myself was not, but Christ in me was all.
Thenceforth to me to live was Christ, and Christ
None other than that Man of Calvary,
The Jesus whom we crucified and slew.
Rabban Gamaliel, then knew I that God
Had visited His people otherwise
Than we were used to dream that He would come,
In glory, and in splendor, and in power,
To overwhelm our enemies, and us
To the high places of the earth lift up.
Yea, otherwise, far otherwise, than so,
Had our God visited His people--hid
That glory which no man could see and live--
Sojourning in the person of one born
Lowly, to teach us that the lowly place,
And not the lordly, is for us to choose.
Whoso the lowly place shall choose, and, prone
Before Jehovah humbled to be man
In Jesus Christ of Nazareth, fall down
To worship, and, believing, to obey,
Him will the Lord God show Himself unto,
Since unto such He can, such being like
Himself and able to behold His face."
Silence between them, silence filled to Paul
With intercession of the Spirit, He
In groanings that could not be uttered praying;
And to Gamaliel silence filled with awe.
A pride not inaccessible to touch
From the divine, and not incapable
Of moments almost like humility,
Was nature to Gamaliel that sometimes
Renewed him in his spirit to a child.
He lay now like an infant tremulous
That feels the motion of the mother's breast,
But other motion, of its own, has not.
The awful powers of the world to come,
Benign but awful, brooded over him;
Eternity a Presence watching Time!
Such breathless silence of the elder twain
Left audible the breathing of the boy,
Young Stephen, who, worn weary with his hours
Of over-early anxious walk and watch,
Had found the happy haven, ever nigh
To youth and health and innocence o'erwrought,
And dropped his anchors in the sounds of sleep.
Thus then stretched out remiss upon the floor,
As if unconscious body without soul,
Lay Stephen slumbering there, beside those two
So wakeful that each might in contrast seem
Soul only, without body, soul disclad.
A blast, not loud, of trumpet sudden blown
For signal, and a clangor as of stir
Responsive from the mailéd feet of men,
Broke on the stillness from the court without.
Gamaliel, rousing from his reverie,
Gazed deep on Paul, who met his master's eye--
Gazed long and deep with slow-perusing look.
"Look on me, Saul, and let me look on thee,"
At length Gamaliel said, "look on thee still;
Steady thine eye, if that thou canst, my son,
And my look take, unruffled, like a spring
Sunken beneath the winging of the wind;
Stay, let me sound within thee to the deeps,
And touch the bottom of thy being, there
At leisure with mine eye the truth explore.
Be pure and simple, if thou mayest; cloud not
My seeing with aught other than sincere,
Nor cross with baffling thwart perversity."
Gamaliel, leaning on his elbow, fast
His aged vision, like an eagle's, fixed
On Paul, and through the windows of his soul,
Wide open, as into a crystal sky
Gazing, beheld his thoughts orbed into stars.
Half disappointed and half satisfied,
The gazer slowly let the look intense
Fade from his eyes, and pass into a deep
Withdrawn expression, as of one who sees,
Unseeing, things without, and wraps his mind
In contemplations of an inward world.
"No conscious falseness," murmured he, aloud,
Yet inly, as communing with himself;
"No conscious falseness there, the same clear truth
That ever was the character of Saul;
No falseness, and no subtle secret flaw,
Unconscious, in the soundness of the mind;
The same sane sense that marked him from of old.
He has been deceived; how could he be deceived?
That light which fell around him at mid-noon,
Who counterfeited that? It might have been
Force from the sun that smote him in the brain,
As he was smitten whom Elisha healed,
That son of promise to the Shunammite--
Nay, that had made a darkness, and not light,
To him, and dulled his senses not to hear,
And dulled his fancy not to feign, such voice
As that which spake so dreadfully to him.
Astounding voice, that uttered human speech
And yet, like thunder, occupied the world!
Did Saul discern the tongue in which it spake?
Perhaps some mere illusion of the mind,
Whimsical contradiction to the thought
That had so long been uppermost therein,
Imposed itself upon him for the truth;
Perhaps some automatic stroke reverse
Of overwrought imagination made
A momentary, irresponsible
Conceit of fancy seem a fact of sense;
Perhaps, not hearing, he but deemed he heard.
If he distinguished clearly what the tongue
Was of the voice that spake, then--I will ask
And see. Those words, Saul, which thou seemedst to hear,
What were they, Greek or Hebrew? Didst thou heed
So as to mark the manner of the speech,
Or peradventure but the meaning take?"
"Hebrew the words were, master," Saul replied;
"If ever it were possible for me
To lose them from my memory, mine ear
Would hear their haunting echo evermore.
Such light, such sound, forsake the senses never.
O master, when God speaks to man, doubt not
He finds the means to certify Himself.
Let Him now certify Himself to thee,
Through me, me the least worthy of such grace,
To be ambassador of grace from Him!"
Paul's words were not so eloquent as Paul.
He to such conscious noble dignity
Joined such supreme effacement of himself;
Burned with such zeal devoid of eagerness;
A manner of entreaty that was his,
Not for his own, but all for other's sake,
Made such a sweet chastised persuasiveness,
From self-regarding purpose purified;
Meekness of wisdom such clothed on the man
With an investiture of awfulness;
While, fairer yet, a most unworldly light,
A soft celestial radiancy, diffused,
Self-luminous, illuminating all,
The light divine of supernatural love,
Upon him from a sacred source unseen
Flung such a flush, like sunrise on some peak
Of lonely height first to salute the sun;
That Paul, to whoso had beholding eyes,
Shone as a milder new theophany.
Gamaliel had not eyes for all he saw.
He slowly from his leaning posture sank
Relapsed upon the couch, clasping his hands.
Half to himself and half to Paul, he spoke:
"My mind is sore divided with itself.
It is as if the heavenly firmament
Were shifted half way round upon its pole,
And east to west were changed, and west to east;
All things seem opposite to what they were.
Strange, strange, incomprehensible to me!
But strangest, most incomprehensible,
Thou, what thou art to what thou wast, O Saul!
Thou wast, though ever not ungentle, proud
Ever, the proudest of the Pharisees.
I loved thee, I admired thee, for thy pride.
Pride did not seem like arrogance in thee,
But meet assumption of thy proper worth;
Rather, such air in thee, as if thou woredst
A mantle of thy nation's dignity,
Committed by the suffrages of all
Unto the worthiest to be worthily worn.
And now this Saul, our paragon of pride,
Through whom our suffering nation felt herself
Uplifted from the dust of servitude,
In prophecy by example, to her true,
Long-forfeited inheritance, to be
One day restored to her, of regal state--
This Saul I see beside me here a gray
Old man humbling himself, humbling his race,
In abject posture of prostration bowed
Before--whom? Why, nobody in the world!
Before--what? Why, the phantom of a man
Led through low life to malefactor's death!
Impossible transformation, to have passed
Upon that proud high Saul whom once I knew;
Impossible perversion, baffling me!
Impossible, but that with mine own eyes,
But that with mine own ears, I witness it."
In simple helpless wonder and amaze
More than in wroth rejection scorn-inspired,
Gamaliel thus had uttered forth his heart.
Paul had his answer, but he held it back,
Respectfully awaiting further word
Seen ripe and ready on Gamaliel's lips.
A question, still of wonder, soon it came:
"Tell me, what hast thou gained, in all these years
Of thy most strange discipleship, my son?"
A pathos of compassion tuned the tone
With which Gamaliel so appealed to Paul.
Paul, with a pathos of sweet cheerfulness,
In dark and bright of paradox replied:
"Gained? I have gained of many things great store;
Much hatred from my erring countrymen;
Much chance of thankless service for their sake;
Stripes many, manacles, imprisonments,
Beatings with rods, bruisings with stones, shipwrecks,
A night and day of tossing in the deep;
Far homeless wanderings up and down the world;
Perils on perils multiplied, no end,
Perils of water--wave and torrent flood--
Perils by mine own countrymen enraged,
Perils from heathen hands, perils pursued
Upon me, ceasing not, wherever men
In city gather, or in wilderness;
In the waste sea, still perils; perils still
Among false brethren; these, and weariness
With painfulness, long watchings without sleep,
Hunger and thirst endured, oft fastings fierce,
Cold to the marrow, shuddering nakedness.
Such things without, to wear and waste the flesh,
And then beside, the suffering of the spirit
In care that comes upon me day by day
For all the scattered churches of the Lord.
I have not missed good wages duly paid;
Gain has been mine in every kind of loss."
Paul's answer turned Gamaliel's sentiment
Into pure wonder, pity purged away.
Deeper and deeper in perplexity
Sank the old man, the more in thought he strove;
As when the swallow of a quicksand sucks
Downward but faster one who writhes in vain.
Silent he listening lay, and Paul went on:
"I have thus counted as the vain world counts,
Summing the gains of my apostleship.
I myself reckon otherwise than thus.
For, what was gain to me, in that old state
Wherein thou knewest thy disciple Saul,
This count I now but only loss and dross,
Yea, all things count but dross, all things save one,
To know Christ Jesus, and be known of Him.
That knowledge is the one true treasure mine;
True, for eternal; mine, for not the world,
Nor life, nor death, nor present things, nor things
To come, nor height, nor depth, nor aught beside
Created in the universe of God,
Can from me wrest this one true good away.
I have had sorrow, but amid it joy;
Pain has been mine, but hidden in it peace;
Rest, deeper than the weariness, has still
My much-abounding weariness beguiled;
Immortal food my hunger has assuaged,
And drink of everlasting life, my thirst.
I have sung praises in imprisonment,
At midnight, with my feet fast in the stocks,
And my back bleeding raw from Roman rods;
So much the spirit of glory and of power
Prevailed to make me conqueror of ill.
Tossed in whatever sea of bitterness,
Wide as the world, and weltering with waves,
A fountain of sweet water still I find
Fresh as from Elim rising to my lips.
A parable in paradox, sayest thou,
But--"
Stephen here his eyes wide open laid
And looked a look of simple love on Paul.
His sleep had sudden-perfect been, as night
At the equator instantly is dark;
And now, as day at the equator dawns
Full splendor, and no twilight of degrees,
So Stephen was at once and all awake.
He straight, without surprise, remembered all,
Or, needing not remember, recognized.
Paul caught his nephew's upward look of love,
And sheathed it in the light of his own eyes,
Which, downward bent a moment on the boy,
Gave him his gift with usury again.
"Behold," said Paul, "my parable made plain
By parable not dark with paradox.
A sea of bitterness was yesterday
Poured round me in that madding multitude
That tossed me on the shoulders of its waves;
But here is this my loving nephew, Stephen,
A fountain of sweet water in the sea--
Art thou not, Stephen?--whence to drink my fill.
But this is parable of parable;
No more--for what I mean is still to speak.
Know, then, there is no earthly accident
Of evil that has happened me, or can
Happen, nay, and no swelling flood of such,
Of any power at all to touch with harm
The peace that passeth understanding, fixed
By Jesus in my inward firmament;
The sea less vainly might assail the stars."
"If this thou meanest," Gamaliel, groping, said,
"That when the angry people yesterday
Bore thee headlong and menaced death to thee,
Then thou wert calm at heart, feeling no fear--
What else were that than boasting, 'I am brave,'
Which but such vaunt of it could bring in doubt?"
"Nay, master," Paul said, "braggart am I not,
As justly thou hast signified no brave
Man can be; and the peace whereof I speak
Is not the calmness that the brave man drinks
Out of the cup of danger at his lips.
That also I perhaps have sometimes known;
But this is other, and a mystery
Even to myself, who only have, and not
The secret of the having understand--
Save that I know it no virtue, but a gift
Renewed forever from the grace of Christ."
Gamaliel listened deeply, with shut eyes;
He listened, and kept silence, and then sighed,
A long, considerate sigh, and unresolved.
His struggling reason could not right itself;
It staggered like a vessel in the sea
That cuff and buffet of the storm has left
A hulk, dismasted, rudderless, forlorn,
Wedged between waves rocking her to and fro,
And threatening to engulf her in the deep;
So there Gamaliel swayed, with surge on surge
Of thought and passion sweeping over him,
Till now he trembled on the point to sink.
Paul saw the old man's state, and, pitying him,
Knew how to shed a balm upon the waves.
With a low voice, daughter of silence, he
Slowly intoned a soft, melodious psalm:
"'Not haughty is my heart, O God the Lord,
Nor do mine eyes ambitiously aspire;
In great affairs I exercise me not,
And not in things too wonderful for me.
Yea, I have stilled and quieted my soul;
As with its mother a new-weanéd child,
So is my soul a weanéd child with me.
O Israel, hope thou, in Jehovah hope,
From this time forth and even forevermore!'"
The mood, all melting, of that monody--
Less monody, than sound of sobbing ceased--
Its cradling gentle lullaby to pride,
Went, subtly permeant, through Gamaliel's soul,
And mastered it to sympathy of calm.
Paul saw with pleasure this effect, and wished
The too much shaken old man venerable
Might taste the soothing medicine of sleep.
Not pausing, he, with ever softer tone
Verging toward silence, over and over again
Crooned like a cradle melody that psalm;
Till, as that vexing spirit in Saul the king
Once yielded to young David's harping, so
Now even the fluttering of the aged flesh
Owned a strange power reverse to cancel it,
Hid in the vibrant pulsing of Paul's voice,
Its flexures and its cadences, that matched
The meaning with the music; lulled to rest,
Gamaliel lightly, like an infant, slept.
"Hist! Haste!" So Paul to Stephen signed and said;
"Hence, and bring hither quickly bread and wine,
Wherewith to cheer Gamaliel when he wakes;
He sleeps now, weary with unwonted thought."
Shimei saw Stephen from the fort come out
And bear purveyance back of bread and wine;
So, earlier, he had seen Gamaliel pass,
Led by the hand of Stephen, through the gate,
Presumably to visit Paul within.
For he, as ever when some crime he teemed,
Uneasy till the full-accomplished birth,
Was like the hungry hunting hound denied
Access to his wished prey, known to be near--
Though thus from touch, as too from sight, withdrawn,
And only by the teaséd nostril snuffed--
Who cannot cease from patient jealous watch,
On haunches sitting, or on belly prone,
Lest somehow yet he miss his taste of blood--
So that ill spirit all day had scented Paul,
Shut up within the castle out of reach,
And sedulously studied, at remove,
Whatever might be token of attempt,
Other's or his, the morrow's doom to cheat.
The very thought, 'Should he slip through our hands!'
Was anguish, like a goad, to Shimei,
Who now was sure he had the hope divined
That Paul was harboring--an escape by night!
'Paul, in the darkness, stealing out disguised
As old Gamaliel, would, with meat and drink
Supplied him, safety seek in distant flight.'
Filled with such thought, the tireless crafty Jew,
Colluding with the sentry at the gate,
There sat him down the sentry's watch to share;
Paul should by no such stratagem avoid
The vengeance that next morrow waited him.
But Paul and Stephen, guileless, of the guile
Imputed dreamed not; they with happy thought
Contented them until Gamaliel woke.
Then when Gamaliel woke, they gave him wine,
Pure from the grape, so much as heartened him,
And bread that strengthened him, from fasting faint.
Discourse then followed, eased with many a change
From theme to theme, from mood to mood diverse,
Until the long daylight was waned away,
And twilight deepened round them talking still.
Gamaliel, in whatever various vein
Of converse with his outward mind employed,
Was ever, in his deeper inward mind,
Resistlessly drawn backward to the doubt,
The question, the perplexity, the fear,
'Saul--is he right? And is Gamaliel wrong?
And have I missed to know the Christ of God?'
He gazed abstractedly on Paul, beheld
So different; less in outer aspect changed--
Although therein, too, other--than in act,
In gesture and in attitude of soul,
The spirit and the motive of the man,
Transfigured from the pride that once was Saul.
"I do not know thee, Saul," at length he said;
"Nay, nay, not Saul--I should not call him Saul,
This is some different man from him I knew,
In other years long gone, and called him Saul!
Such difference in the same the sameness makes
Impossible. Impossible, but that
The sameness still in difference survives
Persistently. The impossible itself
I must believe--when I behold it."
"Yea,"
Paul said, "and more, the impossible become,
When God so wills it; as for me He willed!
My life these many years, my self, has been
One contradiction of the possible.
The reconcilement of all things in Christ
Is God the Blessed's purpose and decree.
For God delights in the impossible."
Gamaliel did not heed, but murmuring spoke,
In absent deep communion with himself:
"Saul, Paul, the same still, and so changed, so changed!
And cause of change none other than that stroke,
That lightning-stroke he tells of, launched on him
From out a cloudless sky at blazing noon!
Whence, and what was it, that stupendous blow!
Would He have lied Who flashed it blinding down?
Or suffered any liar to claim it his?
And the dread Voice made answer: 'It is I,
Jesus of Nazareth, the Crucified.'
Lo, my whole head is sick, my whole heart faint,
Turned dizzy with the whirl of many thoughts--
Thoughts many, and too violently strange,
For a worn-weary aged mind like mine!
I feel I am too feeble to abide
Much longer all this tumult of my heart;
I shall myself cease, if it does not cease.
And peradventure cease it would, could I
Stop striving, and give up to be a child.
A child once more! Ah, that in truth were sweet,
To find some bosom like a mother's, where
I might lay down my aching head to rest,
This head, so hoar, the foolish think so wise!
Old, but not wise, not wise indeed though old;
In weakness--would it were in meekness too!--
A child, leaning, with none to lean upon--
Such is Gamaliel in his hoary age!"
Besides his words, the old man's yearning look
Bore witness to the trouble of his mind.
Paul spoke--so gently that the sense he gave
Seemed to Gamaliel almost his own thought:
"'Come unto Me,' Messiah Jesus said,
'Come unto Me,' as Who had right, said, 'ye
That labor and are heavy-laden, all,
Come unto Me and I will give you rest.
My yoke upon you take, and learn of Me;
For meek am I in heart, and lowly; so
Shall ye find rest unto your souls."
From Paul
No more; for, all as if he naught had heard,
But only was remembering what he heard,
Gamaliel went on musing audibly:
'Rest'--comfortable word! But he was young
That spake thus, young, and in the law unlearned;
And of a yoke spake he, 'My yoke,' he said.
Surely I am too old to go to school,
Too reverend-old, my neck so late to bend,
A sign to all the people--stooped to take
Meekly that youngster Galilæan's yoke!
Beware, beware! I tremble at the words
I speak. I feel the dreadful presence here,
More dreadful, of the power that shook me so,
When those apostles of the Nazarene
Stood up before our council to be judged.
If I should now, this last time, err through pride!"
The murmur of Gamaliel's musing ceased;
But ceased not the strong crying without words
In Paul's heart for his master so bestead.
The solemn silence of that prison cell,
Less broken than accented by the tread
Monotonous and measured heard without
Of the dull sentry pacing to and fro
His beat along the way before the door
More like mechanic pendulum than man;
The darkness of the place now utter, night
Full come, no lamp; the awe, the dread suspense
Unspeakable of such an issue poised,
Eternity in doubtful balance there
A-tremble on a razor-edge of time--
This even on Stephen's bright young spirit cast
As if a shadow from the world to come;
He parted with it after nevermore
The vivid certainty, that moment seized,
Of an Unseen, more real, beyond the Seen.
But presently Gamaliel yet again
Mused audibly in murmur as before:
"I fear me I shall fail, and not let go
Betimes the hold I have, the hold has me,
Say rather, this fierce hold upon myself
And mine own righteousness so dearly earned,
To take the fall proposed, the shuddering fall,
Through emptiness and that waste waiting deep
Of nothing under me, in hope to reach
At last--what rescue, or what landing-place?
Rest in the arms once pinioned to the cross!
He draws me with His heavenly-uttered 'Come'!
This is God's voice; God's voice I must obey--
Yea, Lord, thy servant heareth, and I come.
I say it, but I do it not. Too late?
What if at last I prove to hold too hard
Upon myself, and not undo my hand,
Grown stiff with holding long, until too late!
These are my last heart-beats, and with the last,
The very last, what would I do? Resist?
Resist, or yield? Oh, not resist, but yield;
Lord, help me not resist, but yield, but yield--"
The faltering utterance failed, suspended; then,
To a new key transposed, went faltering on:
"This peace within my breast, the peace of God!
Jesus, Thou Son of Blesséd God Most High,
I know Thee by the token of Thy peace!
Thine is this peace, not given as by the world.
Thou wast beforehand with Thy servant; I
Had not known Thee, hadst Thou not first known me,
And hastened to be gracious, ere I died.
Thou art most gracious, and I worship Thee.
What was it Simeon said?--'Now lettest Thou
Thy servant hence depart in peace,' for I--
In peace, in peace, even I--yea, for mine eyes,
Mine also, most unworthy, have beheld
The light of Thy salvation, O my God!
Oh, peace ineffable! It seems to steal
Through all my members and dispose to rest.
I think that I will sleep; I am at peace.
My heart has quieted itself, peace, peace--"
The words died into silence audible;
Soft, like a wavelet sinking, ceased his breath,
And there Gamaliel lay, a breathless peace.
Paul joyful, knowing that his aged friend
Had found peace in believing, did not dream
That it had been the last of life for him,
The first of life indeed, Paul would have deemed;
But thinking, 'He has fallen asleep once more,'
Gave silent thanks to God and himself slept,
With Stephen then already safe asleep.
When, with the earliest dawn, four elders came,
Gamaliel's equals, to Antonia,
In reverent wise to bear him thence away,
They found the many-wrinkled brow that was,
Smoothed out most placid fair, and on the cheek
A bloomy heavenly hue, as if of youth
Revived, or immortality begun.
But Paul and Stephen, summoned to depart,
The sleeper's sleep were minded not to break;
There in the dead and middle of the night,
They knelt to kiss the forehead in farewell,
And were surprised to feel the touch was cold.
BOOK III.
SHIMEI AND THE CHILIARCH.
Paul, accompanied by young Stephen, is started at about midnight,
under strong military escort, for Cæsarea. At the gate of the
castle, Shimei, lurking there, is arrested, and brought before the
chiliarch, Claudius Lysias by name. A conversation ensues, in which
Shimei, for a time with some success, practises on the chiliarch his
characteristic arts of deception. At last, the chiliarch, denouncing
him for what he is, and putting him under heavy bonds to respond
in person, whenever and wherever afterward commanded by the Roman
authorities, dismisses him from presence, chagrined and dismayed.
SHIMEI AND THE CHILIARCH.
Ere midnight, had reveillé to those twain
Sounded, and from brief slumber rallied them.
They passed from the surprise of that farewell
Kissed on the coolness of Gamaliel's brow--
He his reveillé waiting from the trump
Of resurrection, tranced in happy sleep!--
From this passed Paul and Stephen to the court
Without, where stood, made ready in array,
Five hundred Roman soldiers, foot and horse,
Filling the place with frequence and ferment.
Armed men, and horses in caparison,
And saddled asses thick together poured--
All was alive with motion and with sound.
There was the stamping hoof of restless steed,
The rattling bridle-rein, the bridle-bit
Champed hoary, the impatient toss of head
Shaking the mane disheveled, and with foam
Flecking the breast, the shoulder, and the flank,
Eruptive snort from nostril and from lip,
The ass's long and melancholy bray,
Horse's salute of recognition neighed
To greet some fellow welcomed in the throng,
Therewith, voices of men, scuffle of feet--
All under bickering light and shadow flung
From torches, fixed or moving, fume and flame.
To Paul and Stephen sharp the contrast was
Between that quietude and this turmoil,
Sleeping Gamaliel and these urgent men!
But Paul his peace held fast amid it all,
Peace, yet a posture girded and alert;
While Stephen, hanging on his uncle's eye,
Caught the contagion of that heedful calm.
The natural pathos of one fond regret
Ached in the heart of Paul, a hoarded pain--
His wish, denied him, to have given in charge,
Before he went, Gamaliel's lifeless form,
If to the keeping of his kindred not,
At least to Roman care and piety;
Amid the hurly-burly of the hour,
No chance of speech, with any that would heed,
For Jewish prisoner hurried thence by night!
But Paul's reveréd friend, safe fallen asleep
In Jesus, beyond care or want was blest;
Yea, and the human reverence of great death,
Toward one in death so reverend great as he,
Well might be trusted, for such clay to win,
Through kindred care, the sepulture most meet.
Yet Paul, come to Antipatris, and there
Left with the horsemen only thence to ride,
A needless careful message touching this
Gave to the chief of the returning foot.
When to the chiliarch's ear such word was brought,
That captain deeply mused it in his mind--
To find it throw a most unlooked-for light
On certain dark alternatives of doubt
That had meanwhile his judgment sore perplexed.
Lowly upon an ass they seated Paul,
And Stephen, likewise mounted, ranged beside.
Then those appointed to prick forth before,
Out through the two-leaved gate at sign withdrawn,
Were issuing on the street in order due,
When the proud prudent steed that led the way
Swerved, and, with mighty surge of rash recoil,
Had nigh his rider from the saddle thrown.
He, his fine nostril wide distended, snuffed
Suspicion on the tainted wind, and, dazed
His eyes with darkness from the glare just left
Of torchlight in the court, uncertain saw,
To the right hand beside the open port,
There on the ground, as ambushed at his feet,
A motion, or a shadow, or a shape,
Which to his careful mind portended ill.
"Halt!" rang abrupt the startling stern command;
"Seize him!" the leader of the vanguard cried,
And pointed to the skulking figure near.
Darted three soldiers from the rank of foot,
With instant light celerity--a flash
Of movement from the serried column sent
Inerrant to its aim, like lever-arm
Of long bright steel by some machine flung forth
To do prehensile office and fetch home--
Darted upon the man in hiding there,
And brought him prisoner to the chiliarch.
"Knowest thou this man?" the chiliarch asked of Paul.
"Shimei his name, an elder of the Jews,"
Responded Paul; turning, the chiliarch then
Said: "Thou--Stephen, I think they call thee--speak.
Thou toldst me yesterday, not naming him,
Of one all-capable of crime, the head
And chief of a conspiracy to slay;
Answer--thou needst not fear--is this the man?"
Stephen flushed shame; "The same, my lord," he said;
He dropped therewith his eyes, and head declined.
"Thou stayest," the chiliarch said to Shimei;
"On, and with speed!" he to the soldiers said.
To a centurion, then, attending him:
"Relieve the sentry set outside the port,
And hither bid the man released to me."
"What wast thou doing at thy sentry-post,
That miscreant such as this should sit him there
Unchallenged? Sleeping? Soothed perhaps to sleep
With chink of gold sweet-shaken in thine ear?"--
A perilous frown dark on his imminent brow,
The chiliarch thus bespoke the sentinel.
But with full steady eye, the man replied:
"I crave thy pardon, if, through ignorance
I erred, but I nowise forgot myself,
Or failed my duty of strict challenging.
Indeed, sir, if the man in presence be
Aught but a loyal, honest gentleman,
Then am I much deceived, and punish me;
But not for slackness or base traitorhood.
As I my oath and office understand,
I was true soldier and true sentinel."
'Sound heart, if addle head,' the chiliarch thought,
"Thy oath and office, my good sentinel--
Thou needest to understand them better," said.
The sentry, fain to clear himself, began:
"He told me"--
"Doubtless some amusing tale,"
Smiling an easy scorn, the chiliarch said.
Surging with zeal and conscious honesty,
The sentinel again his part essayed:
"He said, sir"--
"Aye, I warrant thee he did,
If but thou hearkenedst," said the chiliarch;
"Tongue seldom lacks, let ear be freely lent.
Sharp question and short answer, there an end--
That is the wisdom for the man on watch.
Words are a master snare, beware of words,
Thine own or other's, either equal fear;
No parley, is the sentinel's safe rule.
Whet up thy wits, my man, but this time--go!"
The sentry thus dismissed, retiring, shot
Into the chiliarch's ear a Parthian word:
"Beseech thee, sir, prejudge nor him, nor me;
Wait till thou hear the gentleman explain."
"Thou hast bewitched him well," to Shimei
Turning, the chiliarch said; then, with cold eye
Regarding and repelling him, exclaimed
"Hoar head, thou lookest every inch a rogue!"
Shimei had marked with a considering mind
The chiliarch's manner with the sentinel;
In dilatory parry, he replied:
"Not what we look, but what we are, we are."
"But what we are, conforms at length our looks,"
Surprised, amused, in doubt, but dallying, matched
The Roman his rejoinder. Then the Jew,
Adventuring on one more avoidance, said:
"Well dost thou say 'at length'; for it might chance
That looks were obstinate, requiring time."
"Coiner of wisdom into apothegm!
An undiscovered Seneca in sooth,
Where least expected, seems I meet to-night!
But spare to bandy sentences with me."
With change to chilling dignity from sneer,
The Roman so rebuffed the cringing Jew;
Who, cringing, yet was no least whit abashed,
But answered: "Pardon, sir, thy servant, who
Has missed his mark in his simplicity.
I thought, 'If I might spare my lord his time!'
And dutifully thereto spared my words.
The farthest was it from my humble aim
To mint my silly thought in adages.
Forgive me, if, unconsciously set on
By thy example of sententious speech--
True wisdom closed in fitting words and few--
I seemed to match my worthless wit with thine.
I have a helpless habit of the mind,
A trick of mimicry that masters me;
When I observe in them what I admire,
I can not but my betters imitate.
I fear me I have compromised my cause;
Had I been deeper, I had less seemed deep!
I lack the art to show the artless man
That in my own true self, sir, thou shouldst see.
With my superiors, I am not myself;
I take on airs, or seem to, copying them.
Quite other am I with my proper like;
I feel at home, and am the man I am.
Ask that plain-spoken, honest sentinel--
He now was my own sort, I never thought
To strain myself above my natural mark
With him; we were hail fellows, he and I,
And talked the harmless wise that such know how.
With thee--oh, sir, myself I quite forsook,
And slipped into a different Shimei.
Pity my weakness, I am sick of it;
To ape the great is folly for the small--
But small may hope forgiveness from the great!"
The chiliarch listened, unconvinced; yet charmed,
Like the bird gazing by the serpent charmed.
"Pretend that I am of thy kind," said he,
"And show me how thou with the sentry talkedst."
Now Lysias nursed a proudly Roman mind
Disdainful of all nations save his own--
Disdainfully a Roman but the more,
That he by purchase, not by birth, was such;
The nation that he ruled he most disdained.
Child of the high-bred fashion of his time,
By choice and culture he a skeptic was.
Skeptic, he yet was superstitious too,
Open and weak to supernatural fears;
He easily believed in magic powers,
Charms, sorceries, witchcrafts, incantations, spells,
And all the weird pretensions of the East.
His habit of disdain and skepticism
Made him a cynic in his views of men;
Whereby he oft, wise-seeming, was unwise.
He took upon himself laconic airs
In speech, in action airs abrupt, as who
Bold was, and strong, and from reflection deep--
The manner, rather than the matter, his.
To any chance observer of his ways
In use of office and position, these
Could but have seemed comportable and fair.
Accesses too of gentleness he had,
Wherein a strain of kindly in the man
Opened and gushed in flow affectionate,
Or well-becoming courtesy and grace.
This Roman chiliarch, Claudius Lysias, now
Found himself much at leisure and at ease,
Rid of that worrying case of prisoner strange;
Unconscious satisfaction with himself
Warmed at his heart, a pleasurable glow--
He had so neatly got it off his hands!
He was quite ready, mind acquitted thus,
Heart buoyant, to disport himself. He saw
That in the man before him he had met
No dull mere mediocrity, but one
Who, besides being ruler of the Jews,
As Paul pronounced him, had a quality,
An individual difference, all his own.
Claudius might test this man, get him to talk--
An interesting study, learn his make.
Besides the pleasure to his appetite
For piquant knowledge of his fellow-man,
It might in some way, indirect the better,
Give him a point or two of policy
To guide the conduct of his rulership
Among a people difficult to rule.
In such mood, idle, curious, partly wise,
This half-wise man, unwise through cynicism,
Gave himself leave to say to Shimei:
"Pretend that I am of thy kind, like him,
Let me hear how thou with the sentry talked."
Hardly could Shimei, through the mask he wore
Of feigned simplicity, help leering out,
Confessed the mocker that he ever was,
In that sardonic grin, as he replied:
"Pretense, of whatso sort, be far from me--
Save when my betters wish it of me; then,
I think it right to put my conscience by;
Or rather place it at their service--that,
The dearest thing the poor good man can claim!
I reason in this way, 'Why should I presume
To scruple, where those wiser far than I
Are clear?' That sure would be the worst pretense--
Pretending to be holier than the saints.
My will, thou seest, is tractable enough;
But how, with thee, to feel sufficient ease
To do what thou desirest, go right on
And talk and chatter as we simple did!
"First, then, perhaps I said: 'This is dull work'--
And no offense to thee, sir, that I said it--
'Dull work,' said I, 'to stand, or pace, and watch,
Long hours alone, and nothing like to happen
That makes it needful thou shouldst thus keep watch!'
'Aye,' grunted he; I thought him stupid like,
But I had something I could tell him then
That might rub up his wits and brighten them.
'There is a plot,' said I. 'Aye, plots enough,'
Said he. 'And something thou shouldst know,' I said.
'I doubt,' said he; and added: 'Soldiers should
Know nothing but their duty, how to watch,
March, dig, fight, slay, be slain, and no word speak.
Thou hadst better go,' said he, like that, more frank
Than courteous, thou mightst think--he meant no harm,
But only like a loyal soldier spoke.
I did not go, but said: 'The plot I mean
Is of escape from prison.' But he replied:
'Nobody can escape these times from prison;
The emperor has a hundred million eyes,
That never wink, because they have no lids,
And never sleep, because they never tire,
And these run everywhere and all things see;
The emperor's arms are many, long and strong,
East, west, north, south, they range throughout the world.
Oh, he can reach thee wheresoever hiding,
And pluck thee thence and fetch thee safely home;
The world is all his prison, the emperor's.'
'Thou thinkest that?' said I. 'No doubt,' said he.
'But captives still,' said I, 'might try to escape?'
'Oh, aye,' said he, 'that is quite natural.'
'And should they try,' I said, 'with thee on watch,
And should they somehow skill to get by thee,
Then--and although they be thereafter caught--
How fares it then with thee?' said I to him--
'Yea, how with thee that lettest them go by?'
'Then there would be,' he said, 'account to give,
And I should wish I had not been on watch.'
'Nay, better wish, man, thou hadst better watched,'
Said I, 'and thyself caught the fugitive.'
'Aye, that were something better yet,' said he.
'Why, yea,' said I, 'that, laid to thy account,
Might win thee prompt promotion out of this.'
'I never dream,' said he, 'of anything
To lift me from the common soldier's lot.'
'Dreaming is idle, yea,' said I to him,
'But waking thought and action need not be.
For instance, now,' I then went on and said"--
The subtle Hebrew, drawing out his tale,
Mock-artless long, of gossip with the watch,
Had never intermitted an intent,
Considerate, sly, solicitous regard
Fixed on the chiliarch's face, therein to read
The reflex of the phases of his thought;
And now he marked with pleasure how their mere
Indifferent or incredulous cold scorn
Was fading from the haughty Roman's eyes,
Merged in a dawn of curious interest.
Disguisedly, but confidently, glad--
His course seen smooth before him to his goal--
Shimei thence eased that tension of the will
To simulate simplicity of speech,
As, more directly, his ambages spared,
He almost blithely, in his natural vein
Of fondness for the false and the malign,
Slid on, in fabrication of report,
Or in report of fabrication, thus:
"Inside those castle walls there is a man,
A Jew, one Paul, I know him very well,
Prisoner for crime that richly merits death.
The outraged people yesterday were fain
To wait no longer, but at once inflict,
Themselves, with righteous hands, the penalty.
The gentle chiliarch rescued him from them,
Not knowing, as of course how could he know?
What a base wretch he plucked from doom condign.
So here Paul is in Roman custody,
Safe for the moment, but full well aware,
As he deserves to die, that die he will,
Whenever once he shall be justly judged.
He therefore schemes it to attempt escape,
This very night, from his imprisonment.
He has his tool, tool and accomplice both,
In that young fellow thou hast seen pass by,
Entering and issuing through the castle-gate.
'Aye, I have seen him plying back and forth,'
The sentry said, 'a likely Hebrew lad;
I challenged him, but he had documents.
Wicked, ungrateful!--that good chiliarch
Had shown such grace to him for his fair looks.'
'Well, I will stay,' said I, 'and watch with thee,
And help thee foil their game, and thy chance mend.
But let us have two stout young fellows ready,
I can provide them, hidden nigh at hand--
No call for us to spend our breath in running!--
To give the prisoner chase, should need arise.
Arise it will not, if my guess is right,
And I know Paul so well, I scarce can miss.
Paul stakes his hope on craft, and not on speed;
Still, it is good to be at all points armed,
And should craft fail, there will be test of speed,
No doubt of that, since Paul would run for life,
And life is prize to make the tortoise fleet.
Paul is no stiff decrepit--far from such;
Old as his look is, he is light of heel.
Running, however, only last resort,
The desperate refuge of necessity;
Paul's main reliance is on something else,
To wit, a pretty ruse and stratagem.
A wary fellow Paul, and deep in wiles!"
Shimei was entered on a mingled vein
Of true and false reflection of his thought,
Wherein himself could scarce the line have drawn
To part the fabrication from the fact.
Partly, he thought indeed that Paul was such
As he was now describing him to be,
In image and projection of himself;
Partly, he painted an ideal mere,
Conscious creation of malicious mind.
He did uneasily believe, or fear,
That Paul would somehow cheat the malice yet
Of those who hated him; perhaps contrive
Escape by night from prison. His restless mind,
Hotbed of machination, equally
Was hotbed of suspicion and surmise.
His mere suspicion and surmise became,
To his imagination, certainty;
Or else he took, himself, for certainty,
At length, what he for certainty affirmed,
Swearing the false till he believed it true.
He thus the story of his talk prolonged:
"'Now hark thee, friend, and hear me prophesy,'
So to the worthy sentinel I said,
'Thou sawest Paul brought in, and he was Paul--
Tell me, was not he Paul, when he came in?
Aye, Paul he was, thou sayest. Well, what I say--
And this now, mark it, is my prophecy--
Paul will come out, not Paul, but some one else;
In short, will hobble forth--Gamaliel!
Gamaliel, thou must know, I said to him,
'Is the old man that lad this morn led in;
Making, forsooth, a touching sight to see,
So tenderly and gingerly the lad
Guided and stayed the steps of that old man.
A pretty acted piece of loyalty
To venerable age from blooming youth!
Watch, thou shalt see it acted over again
To-night, with haply some improvement made
On the rehearsal, when he leads out Paul.
Paul's hair and beard will not need dusting white,
Being as white as old Gamaliel's now;
But edifying it will be to mark
The careful studied totter of the step,
The tremble of the hand upon his staff,
The thin and querulous quaver of the voice,
The helpless meek dependence on his guide,
And all the various aged make-believe,
Wherewith that subtle master of deceit,
That natural, practised, life-long actor, Paul,
Will put the guise of old Gamaliel on.
'He-he!' I chuckled to the sentinel,
'To me the spectacle will be as good
And laughable, as I should guess a play,
A roaring one, of Plautus were to thee!'"
Shimei was venturing to let lapse his part
Of mere reporter to a talk supposed
Betwixt himself and the dull sentinel--
This to let lapse, or, if not quite let lapse,
Mix and confound with his own proper part,
Inveterate, unassumed, of scoffer free;
He saw the chiliarch sink so deep immersed
In hearing and in weighing what was said,
He deemed he might thenceforward trust his speech,
With scant disguise of indirection, aimed
As frankly for a keen intelligence--
The chiliarch's own, and not the sentinel's--
To snare his listener's now less warded wit.
Paul was clean gone indeed, gone otherwise
Than through the guile that he had dared impute;
But he, meantime, would such a chance not miss,
A golden chance that might not come again,
To prepossess the chiliarch's captive mind
With pregnant ill surmise concerning Paul.
There yet was unexhausted circumstance
Suggestively at hand, seed that but sown
Would a fine harvest of suspicion spring.
Point-blank his aim shifted to Lysias now,
He said: "Why did Gamaliel stay so long?
Why, indeed, come at all, but, having come,
Why so long tarry, wearing out the day?
Where is Gamaliel now? What did it mean
That that officious Hebrew youngster--he
Who, at Paul's wish, Gamaliel hither brought,
Who back and forth has flitted through the gate
All day, carrying and fetching as he liked--
What did it mean, I ask, that he bore in
Flagons of wine and loaves of bread? What mean?
Why, this, provision got to serve Paul's need,
When, issuing in Gamaliel's vesture, he
Should shuffle forth, Gamaliel, on the street,
To try the fortune of a runaway,
A hopeless runaway in Cæsar's world.
The clement chiliarch never would be hard
On an old dotard of a hundred years,
Found aider and abettor in such wile,
Where left behind in ward to take his chance;
Or, possibly, Gamaliel might not know,
Much more, not share, the stratagem of Paul.
It would be easy to put him to sleep
And strip him of his raiment, unawares,
For the exchange, unbargained-for, with Paul.
Paul has much travelled everywhere abroad
And freely commerced with all kinds of men.
He has the skill of many magic arts,
The virtue knows of many a mighty drug;
He can compound thee opiate drinks to drown
Thy thought and senses in oblivion.
He could compose thee in so deep a sleep,
Fair like an infant's, that not all the blare
Of all Rome's trumpets loud together blown
Could rouse thee ever from that fixéd sleep.
A dangerous wicked man to wield such power!"
The chiliarch stood suspended in fast gaze
On Shimei, not perusing him, but lost
In various troubled and confounded thought.
'Had he indeed been tricked? Was Paul such knave?
Had that young Hebrew, with his innocent
Bright look of truth and faith and nobleness,
Had he been hollow, false, base, treacherous,
And played upon a Roman father's heart
To rid a rascal out of custody?
Gamaliel--was that reverend-looking man,
That image of a stately-fair old age,
Was he a low complotter of deceit?
Or, if not that, had nameless turpitude
Abused such dignity into a tool,
Helpless, unwitting, of ignoble wile?'
Thought, question, doubt, suspicion, guess, surmise,
Tumbled, a chaos, in the chiliarch's mind.
Shimei paused, watching, with delight intense;
He felt the chiliarch fast ensnared, his prey.
Wary as was his wit, and ill-inclined
Ever to take a needless risk, or dip
His feet in paths wherein, once entered, he
Perforce must fare right forward, no retreat--
Though such in temper, such in habit, yet--
Either that instant suddenly resolved
That his true prudence was temerity,
Or trusting his resourceful craft to pluck
Desperate advantage from the jaws of chance--
Shimei dared interrupt the Roman's muse:
"Will not my lord the chiliarch now think well
To call Gamaliel into presence here?
Well frightened, the old man perhaps might tell
What passed in his long interview with Paul,
Something to help thee judge betwixt us twain,
Which it were well to credit, Paul or me."
The chiliarch started from his reverie;
"Go bring that Hebrew ancient here," he said.
Then neither Jew nor Roman uttered word,
Each busy with his own unsharéd thought,
Till the centurion from his quest returned,
Alone, and serious, no Gamaliel brought.
"I found"--but scarcely the centurion,
Faltering, had so essayed to make report,
When the wroth chiliarch snatched the word from him:
"Was not he there? Did he refuse to come?
The more loth he, the more to be required!
Gray hair will not atone for stubbornness;
Thou shouldst have brought him, though by greater force.
Something lurks here lends color to the tale
This hoar-head Jew has filled my ear withal.
I will Gamaliel see and learn from him--"
"But, sir," spoke up the loth centurion,
"Nothing from that old Hebrew wilt thou learn,
For--" "I will hear no 'fors,'" the chiliarch said,
"But, hark thee, have the man before me straight!"
Mute, the centurion, left no option, turned,
And, with four soldiers bidden follow him,
Went to the lodgment where Gamaliel slept.
Those five men, used to death in many forms,
Yet in the presence of such death were awed.
The four in silence took the sleeper up,
Motionless, with the couch whereon he lay,
And bore him, as to honored burial,
Into the court beneath the starlit sky,
And set him down before the chiliarch.
Like one of those gray monuments in stone,
Oft seen where church or minster of old days,
In secret vault or holy chapel dim,
Gathers and wards its venerated dead--
Marmoreal image of some man, supine,
Deep sunken, in marmoreal down, to sleep,
Safe folded in marmoreal robes from cold,
The meek, pathetic face upturned to heaven,
And thither-pointing hands forever laid
Together on the breast, as thus to pray
For the shriven spirit thence to judgment fled--
So, stretched upon his couch amid the court,
White with his age, yet purer white with death,
An unrebuking, unrebukable
Reminder of the nothingness of time,
Unheeding who beheld or what was spoke,
Silent, and bringing silence touched with awe,
There in marmoreal calm Gamaliel lay.
The simple presence of the living man,
In native majesty august with age,
Would have subdued who saw to reverence;
But the ennoblement and mystery
Of death, now added, wrought a mightier awe,
And almost breathless made the hush wherein
The chiliarch for the moment from the spell
Of Shimei's woven words was quite set free,
Seeing things true by his simplicity.
Breaking that hush, while never once his gaze
Unfixing from the features of the dead,
"Thou shouldst have told me this," said Lysias
To the centurion, gently chiding him.
But the centurion understood aright
That his superior's words were less as blame
Than as atonement meant for fault his own
In that his late too peremptory air--
This the subaltern knew, and answered not.
Shimei, alone not capable of awe,
Coolly had used the interval of pause,
To take the altered situation in,
And to his own advantage fit his part.
Two points of promise to his profit he
Saw, and at once to seize them shaped his course:
First, to release himself from duress there,
And, further, still to sow the chiliarch's mind
With seed of foul suspicion against Paul.
"Gamaliel mute," said he to Lysias,
"Might, peradventure, if but understood,
Even better witness to thy purpose prove
Than should he waken from his swoon to speak."
The sleight of tone with which was uttered "swoon"--
No emphasis, insinuation all,
Subtle suggestion, naught to be gainsaid,
Since naught was really said, however much
Without the saying got itself conveyed--
This well subserved the wish of Shimei.
For, like a sovereign solvent, that, with soft
Assiduous chemistry insensible,
Some solid to a fluid form breaks down,
There stole from Shimei's speech an influence in,
Which, by degrees not slow, dissolved the charm
Shed from the solemn spectacle of death
Upon the chiliarch's mind; his childlike mood
Vanished, his simple wise credulity!
Lysias reverted to his cynicism,
And, unawares lured on by Shimei,
Followed false lights to a conclusion vain.
Once more he overweened to be astute,
And, with astuteness recommencing, fell
From the brief wisdom reverence brief had brought.
His faith in human virtue undermined,
He doubted and believed exactly wrong;
There where he ought to have believed, he doubted,
And where he should have doubted, there believed--
The captor fallen into the captive's snare.
Lysias resumed to do what Shimei wished;
The tissue of sophistication set
Already well aweaving in the loom
Of fancy and false reason and unfaith,
Which had before been humming in his brain--
This to piece out, and make a finished web.
"'Swoon,' sayest thou?" To Shimei, Lysias thus;
"That is not death, thou thinkest, but a swoon?"
"It looks indeed like death," the crafty Jew
Responded; "yea, it looks like death indeed.
It was not meant, but death it sure must be."
"What wilt thou say?" said Lysias. "'Was not meant!'--
Thy words conceal thy meaning; speak it out."
"Why, sir, I have no meaning to conceal,"
The Jew replied, "no meaning to conceal.
I only thought, I could but only think--
Why, see, Paul was Gamaliel's pupil once,
And loved his master, so as such can love;
At least I thought so. Paul, for sure I know,
Gamaliel like a doting father loved."
"Thou dost not thus explain, 'It was not meant';
Out with thy thought, sir Jew," the chiliarch said.
"What was not meant? By whom not meant? Forsooth,
Not by Gamaliel meant that he should die?
Except the suicide, none means to die;
And death like this is not the suicide's."
"Oh, nay, sir," Shimei said, "no suicide
Was our Gamaliel; far the heinous thought!
A good old man, whom all the people loved,
Paul even, yea, Paul--I thought--till now--but now--
But I will not believe so base of him,
Even him; he did not mean it, did not mean
Worse than to make Gamaliel deeply sleep.
Paul's drug belike was stronger than he thought,
Or weaker waxed Gamaliel with his age.
Paul would himself repent it, now, too late--
Particularly since of no avail,
Thy wise forestalling plan defeating his,
And fruit none from it ripening to his hand!"
"This is too foully base!" said Lysias,
And Shimei's heart misgave him with a fear.
'Too foully base insinuation mine,
Does Lysias mean?' he closely asked himself;
But calmly, with deep candor, said aloud:
"Yea, even for Paul, beyond belief too base!
Paul never meant it, I shall still insist.
He meant at most such sleep as should prevail
Over Gamaliel's scruple to take part
Willingly in his surreptitious flight.
And such a master of his arts is Paul,
I shrewdly doubt if here his mark he missed.
Were Paul but now at hand to try his skill,
I should not wonder yet to see this swoon
Yield to some potent drug of counter force,
And good Gamaliel wake to life again.
Once, as they say--in Troas, I believe--
Where he all night was lengthening out harangue,
After his manner, in an upper room,
A youngster, tired to death of hearing him,
And sensible enough to go to sleep,
Not sensible enough to seat him safe,
Fell headlong out of window, whence he sat,
A good three stories' fall--which finished him.
Stay, not so fast--thou reckonest without Paul!
Yea, Paul performed some sort of magic rite
Over the body of the luckless lad,
Which, presto, brought him round as brisk as ever!
A mighty master in his kind, that Paul!"
"Perish thy Paul with his accurséd craft!"
Burst out the chiliarch in indignant heat.
"Would I but had him back here safe in thrall!--
I should have let them rend him limb from limb!"
A sudden hope beyond the bounds of hope
Flourished up rank, gourd-like, in Shimei's breast.
Were it but possible to have Paul back,
To take that walk yet to the judgment-hall!
The forty faithful should not fail their task!
"Might I propose if it be yet too late?"
With timid daring, Shimei inquired.
"A fleet-foot horse should overtake the troop,
If so thou choose, and turn them hither back.
And thou couldst cause that Paul exert his power
To lift this corpse into a living man--
Which were a famous spectacle to see!
Besides that then thou mightst assure thyself,
Through counsel of our Sanhedrim, what crimes
Worthy of death are proved upon this Paul."
"Thou art a superserviceable Jew,"
The chiliarch frowned and said. A choleric man,
He choleric now, through self-expression, grew.
Exasperate thus, he added: "'Ruler' thou
Of thine accurséd nation--as I hear--
Me too thou fain wouldst rule, with thy advice
Officiously advanced unsought. Know, then,
That I confound thee with thy race, and curse
Ye all together, pestilent brood--not less
Thee than thy fellows, whom thou rulest, forsooth,
Worthy to rule those worthily so ruled!
Like ruler to like people, vipers all!
If I believe thee of thy brother Paul,
It is no wise that I suppose thee true
Rather than him; but only that I reckon
One rascal feels another by mere kin,
And can, and, if so be he hates him, will,
Into his own soul look and paint him _that_--
Making a likeness apt to two at once!
Nay, nay, thou wretched, reptile Jew, all thanks!
I would not have Paul back upon my hands.
I am well rid of _him_, and now hence thou!
Go tell thy fellow-elders of the Jews
That here Gamaliel lies, dead or aswoon,
And bid them haste to bear him hence away.
Go, not one further word from thy foul mouth,
Lest whole thou never go!"
Red with his wrath,
Abruptly on his heel turned the wroth man
And disappeared within. The Jew so spurned--
Though disappointed, imperturbable--
With wry grimace hugging himself, made speed
To use the freedom thus in overplus
Thrust on him, and incontinently went.
Scarce was he well without the castle gate,
When a brusque message from the chiliarch
Summoned him back. He came, with supple knee
Cringing his thanks and deprecations dumb.
"So act thy abject language, if thou will,
But no word speak, edging thine ear to hear,"
The chiliarch, from his heat of passion passed
To a grim mood of resolution, said;
"I will that--no delay--thou hither bring
Large satisfaction from thy countrymen--
Just measure of their estimate of thee!--
That thou wilt duly bide within command
The suddenest from this castle, and appear,
Whenever I may call for thee, to go
Whithersoever I shall bid thee hence,
Whether to Cæsarea or to Rome,
Whether now presently or hereafter long,
Accuser meet and witness against Paul.
Count it that thou thus much at least hast gained,
Through thy this night's adventure, chance, to wit,
Assuréd chance, thy famished grudge to glut
Upon thy brother rogue and countryman--
Be he, that is, the wretch thou paintest him,
_And_, mark it well, be thou his overmatch
In lying eloquence to make appear
Likeliest whatever best thy turn shall serve.
Perhaps twin rascals, of each other worthy,
Will, both at once, and each the other, prove
Just to be what they are, and earn their doom!"
"Send with this worthy," thus the chiliarch,
To his centurion turning, said, "some man
Who knows, if nothing more, thus much at least,
How to be adder-deaf and death-like dumb--
To dog him hence about and hither back!"
"I wish thee pleasure of thy evening walk!"
To Shimei, in mock courtesy, he said.
With pleasantry as bitter as his own
The mocker found himself a second time,
And now to discomposure worse, dismissed.
Of his own will he gladly would have gone
From east to west as wide as was the world,
To weave the meshes of his witness false
About Paul's feet, or still to ambush him
With instant bloody death at unawares;
But thus to go, a lasso round his neck
Held in the hand of Rome--it irked him sore.
His heart misgave him heavily; he felt:
'And here perhaps is destiny for me,
Perhaps, who knows? at last, at last, for me!
On mine own head do I Paul's house pull down?'
Strange, but, born with the boding sense thus born
Of unguessed danger for himself, there crept
Into that case-hard heart, long exercised
To plot of mischief for his fellow-man,
A softness, that was nigh become remorse,
A kind of pity from self-pity sprung,
Toward whoso was endangered, yea, even Paul!
It was the slow beginning of an end--
Slow, liable to be quenched like smoking flax,
Yet not so quenched to be--with Shimei.
Meanwhile, from this to that there stretched much road,
And Shimei still had demon's work to do.
BOOK IV.
BY NIGHT FOR CÆSAREA.
The narrative returns to Paul riding with young Stephen, under
escort of Roman soldiers, toward Cæsarea. The uncle and nephew (at
sufficient remove from the cavalry before them and the infantry
behind them) after an interval of silence, engage in conversation
on a subject suggested by young Stephen's quoting against Shimei
one of the imprecatory psalms. This conversation is prolonged till
Antipatris is reached, from which point young Stephen comes back to
Jerusalem with the returning foot-soldiers, while Paul goes on with
the horse to Cæsarea.
BY NIGHT FOR CÆSAREA.
Clanging their armor and their arms alight
In doubtful glimmer from the torches blown,
Forward into the silence and the dark,
Through the strait street, out from the city gate,
Along the ringing highway stretched in stone
To Cæsarea from Jerusalem,
Rode vanguard in that order of array
The turm of horse--in count three score and ten,
But many fold to seeming multiplied
Under the shadowy light that showed them half,
Half hid them, and amid the numerous noise
And movement of their massive martial tread.
The centuries of foot the rear composed,
While midst, between the horse and infantry,
And double-guarded so from every fear--
Before, behind, commodious interval--
Those Hebrew kinsmen, Paul and Stephen, rode.
A league now measured under the still heaven--
Quiet, they twain, as the beholding stars--
And Stephen heard the silence at his side
Softly become the sound of a low voice.
As when the ground parts and a buried seed--
Quickened already in that genial womb,
But viewless--steals from darkness into light,
So, with such unperceived transition, now,
Melodious meditation in Paul's heart
Grew out of secret silence into song.
Stephen, who, from his very cradle taught,
The holy lore of Scripture had by heart,
Knew the subdued preamble that he heard
For echo from the music of a psalm.
'Mine uncle of Gamaliel muses!' he
Felt from the moment that thus Paul began:
"Yea, so He giveth His belovéd sleep!
Blesséd be God, who such a gift gave him!
Blesséd be God, who yet such gift from me
Withholds, gift longed for, but awaited still
With patience--till His pleasure to bestow!
Blesséd be God! He doeth all things well!
It may be I shall wake until He come!
But if I sleep, I still shall sleep in Him,
For so He giveth His belovéd sleep!
Sweet gift, and sure the way of giving sweet,
Since it will be in Him, in Him, in Him--
However long hence, and however harsh,
The lullaby may be that brings the sleep,
At last, at last, the sleep will be in Him!
To wake to Jesus, or in Him to sleep,
Whichever lot for me He choose, I choose.
His choice I do not know, but He knows mine;
My will, he knows, is His, for Him in me
To choose with, or His will is mine, for me
In Him to choose with, now and evermore."
"Amen!" Paul murmured, with such voice as if
The prayer he uttered turned to sacrament.
Stephen a little lingered, and then said:
"Thou and thy voice, O honored kinsman mine,
Commend to me whatever thou mayst say
Or sing; that inner-sounding melody,
Most sweet, which never other makes save thee,
But oft thou makest as to thyself alone
When thou alone art, or, as now, with whom
Thou lovest, and so trustest, utterly,
It seems--this I have heard my mother say,
Who loves it, as I love it, taught by her--
It seems to pass the hearing sense unheard;
The deeper, if I hear it not, I feel;
My heart feeds on it with her inner ear.
Yet, and however so commended, yet
Thy choice awakens no desire in me.
Sleep, to thy nephew, uncle, seems not sweet,
Or less sweet seems than waking is to him.
To lie, like reverend dear Gamaliel there,
Still, stirless still; cold, marble cold; deaf, dumb;
Calm, yea, too calm, for ever, ever calm;
No pain, no fret, but joy, but pleasure none;
Nor action, nor endeavor, nor attempt,
Nor strife, nor aspiration, nor desire;
No glorious exultation in emprise,
Or rally of reaction from defeat;
Fear none indeed, but never, never hope;
No change, no chance of any change, the same,
The same, continuance without end prolonged;
Of life--nothing, but only dull, dull death
And apathy--O uncle, such a state,
And though thou call it sleep in Jesus, yet--
Shall I confess it, uncle, to my shame?--
It has no charm for me, I wish to live;
I love life, motion, and the sense of power.
Hebrew I am, in spirit as in blood,
Yet Greek withal enough, if Greek it be,
To dread the drear, dark, sunless underworld,
Hades or Sheol, and to choose instead
This cheerful upper air and joyousness,
The brightness of this sun-enlightened earth.
And I should like to see what I with life
Can do; something, I trust, besides to live,
Some worthy, noble, arduous end to serve,
To wrestle with the world and overthrow!"
Paul thought within himself: 'Along this road,
This very road, some score of years ago,
Saul, in the early dawn of that spring day,
Rode for Damascus from Jerusalem,
Nursing such thoughts--fair thoughts they seemed to him!
And I was then nigh double my Stephen's age--
Ah, and not half his bright young innocence!'
"It is thy youth," to Stephen Paul replied,
"Thy youth and health, the fountain fresh of life
Unwasted, springing up for flow in thee;
Life is the secret of the love of life.
My song of sleep I did not sing for thee,
But for a weary older man than thou,
Who has already lived, already seen
What he could do with life! Weary am I--
With living weary, though of living not--
And, God so willing, I should gladly rest."
The sweetness of the pensiveness of this,
From such an one as Paul the aged, smote
On Stephen with a stroke as of reproof--
Unmeant, to him the less resistible--
And touched to recollection and remorse.
He said: "O uncle, be my fault forgiven,
That I so lightly thought but of myself!
This ride to thee is added weariness,
Which to me were exhilaration pure,
Could I forget again, as I cannot,
The need my uncle has of rest instead.
I slept, while thou wert waking, through that long
Farewell talk with thy friend, and I am fresh
From slumber, as thou art with waking worn--
Besides that I am young and thou art old."
"Nay, thou wert right, my lad," said Paul to him;
"'Rejoice thou,' so that ancient preacher cried,
And so cries God Himself within the blood,
'Rejoice thou, O young man, in thy fair youth,
And let thy heart in thy young days cheer thee.'
I were myself the egotist thou blamest,
Were I to hang my heavy age on thee
And with it weigh thy blithesome spirits down;
Besides that I should suffer loss deserved,
Who, in the midmost of my spirit, spring
With answering pulse to pulse of youth from thee.
Go on, my Stephen, for Paul's sake be glad,
Thou canst not be more glad than gladdens me.
Now glad we both are surely in one thing,
That thou hast saved thine uncle from that death.
Let us together sing a gladsome psalm."
Then softly they in unison began,
Softly, with yet their accent jubilant:
"'Had it not been Jehovah on our side,
Let Israel now'--let us as Israel--'say,
Had it not been Jehovah on our side,
When men, together sworn, against us rose,
Then had they truly swallowed us alive,
When sore their wrath against us kindled was;
The waters then had overwhelmed us quite,
Over our soul the rushing stream had gone,
Over our soul the proud exulting waters.
Forever blesséd be Jehovah Lord,
Who did not give us to their teeth a prey!
Escaped our soul is, like unto a bird
That is escaped from out the fowler's snare;
The snare is broken, and escaped are we.
Our help is in the Lord Jehovah's name,
In His name is, who fashioned heaven and earth.'"
They ceased, but presently Paul's voice alone:
"How those great words, which God the Holy Ghost
Spake by the mouth of men of old, elect
To be His earthly oracles--how they
Fill yet the mouth of him that utters them,
And fill the ear of him that hears them uttered,
And the heart fill of him that makes them his--
Fill, and, enlarging ever, ever fill!
They satisfy the soul, not as with food
That sates the hunger, to cry out, 'Enough!'
But as with hunger's self, and appetite
That never ceases crying, 'More! And more!'
Forever greater growing, and sweeter far
Than could be any stay to such desire!
According as the Lord Himself once spake
Pronouncing blesséd those whose hunger is
For righteousness, and promising to them
Fulness. Fulness without satiety
Their blesséd state! State blesséd, sure--to be
If only with that heavenly hunger filled!"
To Stephen half, but half in ecstasy
Of pure abandonment to worshiping
High passion and communion rapt above,
Paul so his heart disburdened of its praise.
"Yea," Stephen said, "it is a noble psalm,
Triumphal in its gladness at escape
Like thine from evil and from evil men.
With all my heart I sang it thankfully--
At least, if joyfully be thankfully;
Yet have _I_ thoughts not uttered through that psalm."
The elder and the wiser well divined,
From something in the manner of the speech
Of Stephen, as too from the words themselves
He spoke, what was the spirit of those thoughts
Within him, which the chanted psalm left dumb.
Paul safer judged it for his nephew's health
Of heart and conscience, that the heat and stir
Of natural thought untoward in him find
Issue in utterance, than sealed shut to be.
"And what, then, nephew, were those thoughts of thine?"
In gentle serious question he inquired.
"How is it, uncle," swerving, asked the youth--
For a fine tact to feel what other felt,
Unspoken, unbetokened, though it were,
Was Stephen's, and this power of sympathy
Now gave him sobering sense of check from Paul--
"How is it, so thou deemest me meet to know,
I never hear thee speak of Shimei?"
"Ah, Stephen," Paul replied, "we lack not themes
To speak of, promising more food to thee
For sweet and gracious thought and feeling. Yet
I think of Shimei, and to God I speak
Of him in prayer, often, not without hope.
I never will abandon him to be
Himself, the self that now is he. Too well,
Too bitterly, I remember what I was,
I myself, once, as rancorous as he!
If guileful less, that was the grace of God,
Who made us differ from each other there.
Hateful to him I needs was, from the first,
But I was hateful more than needed be;
I helped him hate me by my scornful pride.
Would from his hate I could that strand untwine!
Hating Paul less, he less might Jesus hate;
Only to pity Shimei am I clear."
"Thy patience and thy meekness make me fierce
With anger, with ungovernable wrath
Most righteous," Stephen cried, "against those men
Who, hating, hunt mine uncle to the death!
I hate them, and I wish them--what themselves
Wish thee; dogs of the devil that they are!
I know a psalm that I should like to sing--
But I should need to roughen hoarse my voice,
And a tune frame well jangled out of tune,
To sing it as I would, and as were meet.
Thy pardon, but my rage surpasses bound;
To think of what thou art and what they are!
Some spirit in me, right or wrong, too hot
For any counsel, even thine own, to cool,
Forces unto my lips those wholesome words
Of hearty human hatred, God-inspired,
Most needful vent and ease to wish like mine;
I lift to God the prayer Himself inbreathed:
'Hold not thy peace, thou Lord God of my praise!
Who hath rewarded evil still for good,
And hatred still for only love returned,
Set thou a wicked one lord over him,
And Satan ever keep at his right hand.
When he is judged, then let him guilty prove,
And let his very prayer turn into sin.
Few let his days be, and his office let
Another take. His children fatherless,
His wife a widow, be. Nay, vagabonds
His children, let them beg from door to door.
All that he hath, let the extortioner
Catch, and let strangers make his labor spoil.
Let his posterity be utterly
Cut off, and in the time to come their name
Be blotted out. Let the iniquity
Of his forefathers still remembered be
In the Lord's presence, and his mother's sin
Not blotted out: because he persecuted
The poor and needy man, and those that were
Already broken-hearted sought to slay.
Cursing he loved, and cursing came to him;
In blessing he delighted not, and far
From him was blessing. He with cursing clothed
Himself as with his garment, and it sank
Soaking into his inward parts like water
And penetrating to his bones like oil.
Amen! Let cursing be forevermore
As if the raiment wherewith he himself
Covers, and for the girdle of his loins
About them belted fast forevermore!'"
Stephen felt blindly that the eager ire
With which he entered, flaming, on that strain
Of awful imprecation from the psalm,
Faltered within his heart as he went on--
Insensibly but insupportably
Dispirited toward sinking by the lack
Of buoying and sustaining sympathy
Supplied it from without; as if the lark,
Upspringing, on exultant pinion borne,
Should, midway in his soaring for the sun,
Meet a great gulf of space wherein the air
Was spun out thinner than could bear his weight.
He ended, halting; and there followed pause,
Which ponderable seemed to Stephen, so
Did his heart feel the pressure of that pause.
At length Paul said, with sweetest irony,
That almost earnest seemed, it was so sweet:
"Yea, nephew, hast thou, then, already grown
Perfect in love, that thou darest hate like that?"
It was not asked for answer, Stephen knew,
And answer had he none he could have given,
No answer, save of silence, much-ashamed.
Paul let the searching of himself, begun
And busy in the spirit of the youth,
Go on in silence for a while; and then
In gravest sweet sincerity he spoke:
"Hating is sweet and wholesome, for the heart
That can hate purely, out of utter love.
But who for these things is sufficient--save
God only? God is love, and He can hate.
But for me, Stephen, mine own proper self,
I dare not hate until I better love.
When, as I hope, hereafter I shall be
Perfect in love, then I may safely hate;
Till then, I task myself to love alone."
There was such reverence in Paul's gravity,
Reverence implied toward him as toward a peer,
Not peer in age, but peer in human worth--
Toward him, so young, so heady, and so fond--
That Stephen, in the sting of the rebuke
Itself, shaming him, though so gracious, felt
A tonic touch that made him more a man.
Uplifted, while abashed, he dared to say:
"Perhaps I trespassed in my vehemence;
But, uncle, did not God inspire the psalm?"
"Doubtless, my Stephen," Paul replied; "but not,
Not therefore, thee inspire to use the psalm.
Sound thine own heart now, nephew, and tell me,
Which was it in thy heart that prayed the prayer--
True vehemence in sympathy with God,
Or vehemence against thy brother man?
A sentiment of sympathy with me
Thou canst not say, for I have no such wish
As that thou breathedst, touching any man."
"Though not in sympathy with thee, at least
For thy sake," Stephen said, "mine anger burned."
"For my sake, yea, but not acceptably
Even so," said Paul; "since neither did it serve
My cause, nor please me, if I speak the truth.
I know thy love for me and hold it dear;
All the world's gold were no exchange for it.
So, doubt not, Stephen, that to what degree
Love for thine uncle prompted that thy prayer,
Thine uncle thanks thee for it from his heart.
But let us, thou and I together both,
To our own selves severely faithful be.
Shall we not say that that love faulty is,
Which less desires to please the one beloved,
Than to indulge itself, have its own way?
And knowest thou not it would have pleased me better--
Since, for the present, question is of me--
To see my nephew altogether such
As I myself am, lover of all men,
Hater of none, not even mine enemy?
Thou didst not love me well enough for that!
"Thy love though precious and though well-refined
Had yet alloy in it of selfishness--
Of specious, almost lovely, selfishness,
I grant thee; yea, according to the world,
That loves its own illusions, lovely quite--
Of such a selfishness alloy enough
To take its counsel of itself, not me,
Blindly abandoned to its own excess."
"The art of love thou makest difficult!"
Stephen, with chastened deprecation, said.
"Not 'difficult,' impossible," said Paul,
"Save to whom Jesus makes it possible.
I wish that I could bring thee to perceive
How, severed from Him, thou canst not love at all,
Right love, I mean, the one safe sense of love,
Love with the gift of immortality,
Since pure and perfectly-proportioned love!
Left to ourselves, we love capriciously;
Ever some form of fond self-love it is,
Which in disguise of love to other masks.
If thou in Jesus truly hadst loved me
Then hadst thou loved me as I would be loved,
To absolute effacement of thyself
Through whole replacement of thyself with me.
Enormous claim seems this of selfishness
In me? But I describe ideally
The love that I myself to Jesus bear.
In Him I lose, and find again, my self,
And the new self I find again, is--He!
It is but as united thus with Him--
My wish, my will, become the same as His--
That I dare make exaction for myself
Of love that seems to blot another out,
Or merge him in a new and different self.
I ask thee--not my will, but Christ's, made thine--
To love me with the love that pleases Him."
"All this," said Stephen, "must be true, I feel--
I feel it better than I understand."
"I also," Paul said, "in this mystery
Am wiser with my heart than with my mind,
I feel it better than I understand;
Although I understand it better too
Than I can make it plain in any words."
Whereon in silence for a space they rode,
While their thoughts ranged diverse in worlds apart.
Then Stephen: "That distempering heat in me,
O uncle, is clean gone from out mine heart,
Slaked by the overshadowing of thy spirit,
Like the earth cooled with overshadowing night.
I am calm enough, I think, to learn, if not
Thy difficult high doctrine touching love,
Something at least about those psalms of hate.
Hate is the spirit of the psalm I said,
Is it not, uncle?"
"As thou saidst it, yea,
Or I mistook the meaning of thy voice,"
Said Paul; "whatever meant the holy words,
The tones, I felt, meant that and nothing else."
"Could then those words themselves mean something else?"
Asked Stephen.
"Yea," said Paul, "for words are naught
But empty vessels that the utterer fills
With his own spirit when he utters them;
The spirit is the lord of utterance."
"What was the spirit with which the Spirit of God
Breathed these into the soul of him elect
Among the sons of men to give them voice?
Did not God hate whom He so heavily cursed?"
Stephen inquired; and Paul at large replied:
"God hates not any, as wicked men count hate--
And men not wicked may, in wicked mood--
Nor wills that of the souls whom He has made
Any should perish; rather wills that all
Come to the knowledge of the truth and live.
But look abroad upon the world of men;
What seest thou? Many souls resist the will,
The blesséd will to save, of God. Of these,
Some will hereafter yield--thou knowest not who,
But some--and let themselves be saved. Again,
Some will to the end resist--thou knowest not who;
But some--and obstinately choose to die;
Choice is the fearful privilege of all.
Now, toward the man incorrigibly bad,
Who evil loves and evil makes his good
Forever, without hope of other change
Than change from worse to worse forevermore--
Toward such a man, what must the aspect be
Of the Supreme Eternal Holiness?
What but of wrath, or as of wrath, and hate?
Canst thou imagine other face of God
Than frown and threat aflame implacable
Against implacable rebellion set,
And sin eternal, to eternal sin
Doomed, for self-doomed through free unchanging choice?
One flame burns love toward love, and hate toward hate--
Toward hate that utmost love cannot subdue,
The hate that, like the stubborn diamond-stone
Amid the fiercest fires rebellious, bides
Still, in love's sevenfold-heated furnace, hate.
That flame is the white flame of holiness--
Which God is, and whose other name is love."
"God is a dreadful thought," said Stephen. "Yea,"
Said Paul; "such Jacob felt it when he cried,
'How dreadful is this place!' and Bethel named
The place where God was and he knew it not.
God is a dreadful thought, dreadful as sweet--
The sweetness and the dreadfulness are one.
But never was the dreadfulness so sweet,
The sweetness never yet so dreadful shown,
As then when Jesus died on Calvary!
Shroud thyself, Stephen, from the dreadfulness,
Felt to be too intolerably bright,
In the cool, shadowing, sheltering thought, so nigh,
Of mercy, mercy, still in judgment sheathed."
"I feel the buoyance of my spirit sink,
Oppressed by the great weight of these thy thoughts,"
Said Stephen; "and my heart is very still.
I wait to hear what God the Lord will speak."
"Hearken," said Paul. "Those fearful words of curse
Which late thou nigh hadst turned to blasphemy,
Daring to lade them with thy personal spite
Against a neighbor man, whom we must love,
Until we know hereafter, which God fend!
That he bides reprobate, self-reprobate--
Those maledictions dire, through David breathed,
Express not human hate, but hate divine,
Revealed in forms of human speech, and, too,
Inspired in whoso can the height attain
To side with God, and passionlessly damn,
As if with highest passion, any found--
Whom, known not yet, even to himself not known,
Much less to thee or me, but known to God,
And to be known, in that great day, to all--
Fixed in his final choice of evil for good.
Henceforward, Stephen, when thou sayest that psalm,
Say it and tremble, lest thyself be he,
The man thou cursest in its awful curse!"
"If it were right," said Stephen, after pause
Prolonged in solemn chiding of himself,
"If it were right and seemly, things profane
To mingle with things sacred so--I think
Perforce now of a certain tragedy
I read once by that Grecian Sophocles,
Wherein a Theban king, one OEdipus,
Denounces on a murderer frightful doom,
Dreaming not he--though every reader knows--
The murderer he so curses is himself.
I shudder when I think, 'Were it to be
That the fierce blasting I invoked to fall
Upon another's head, I drew on mine:
"Cursing he loved, and cursing fell on him!"'
Forefend it God, and Christ with blessing fill
This heart of mine, too hasting prone to hate!"
"Amen!" said Paul, "thou prayest for me and thee!"
Out of the depths of the long hush that then
Followed between those midnight travellers,
Emerging, like a diver of the sea
That brings up dripping pearl from sunken cave
And, gladdened, lifts it flashing to the sun,
So, to his young companion speaking, Paul--
Not turning while he spoke his countenance
Toward him, but fixed right forward keeping it,
Intent, as on an object not of sight,
Before him held with unmaterial hand,
An unmaterial treasure passing price,
Imagined fair by the creating soul--
Said, with such cheerful rally in the voice
As one invites with, some delight to share:
"Wilt thou hear, Stephen? I have been revolving
In form a kind of hymn concerning love,
Which, in a letter, some twelve months ago,
I wrote the church in Corinth. There was need,
For they were sore at strife among themselves,
Vying with one another to outdo
In divers showy gifts miraculous,
Or outward deeds that daze the eyes of men:
Tongues, prophecies, the keys of mysteries,
High knowledges, sublime degrees of faith,
Almsgivings to impoverishment, stout heart
To brave devouring flames in testimony--
All these things, but for lowly love small care!
"My soul was worn and anxious with my pain
At such distractions of the church of Christ;
I found my peace at last in this thought, 'How
Love would heal all, would gently join from schism,
And in one bind the body of the Lord!'
A wish ineffable seized me to make
Love lovely to those loveless ones. I had,
With the wish born, and of the wish perhaps,
A sudden vision that entranced me quite.
I saw love take a body beautiful
And live and act in most angelic wise;
It was as if a heavenly spectacle
Let down before me by a heavenly hand--
Not to be viewed with unanointed eyes;
I touched my eyes with eyesalve and beheld.
Then a Voice said, 'What thou beholdest, write.'
I took my pen and sought to catch the grace
Of being and behavior shown to me,
And fix it, as I could, in form and phrase,
For those Corinthians and all men to see.
A living picture, and a hymn, there grew.
"Hymn I may call my eulogy of love,
Then written, for indeed it seemed to sing
Within me, as I mused it, and the tune
Still to the hearing of my heart is sweet.
I felt, and feel, a kind of awe of it,
Myself that made it, for I did not make
It wholly, I myself, I know quite well;
A breath divine, breathed in me, purified
My will to will it, and my soul to sing.
"My Stephen will not think it strange that thus
Our talking of an hour ago on hate
Set me to dreaming counterwise of love.
I build of love a refuge for myself,
Whither to run for rest and sanctuary
From thoughts of hatred thirsting for my soul.
Love is my house, and there the air is love--
My shelter round about, the breath I draw.
No castle is there like my house of love,
Charmed not to let footstep of evil in;
And what will quench the Wicked's fiery darts
Like love drawn round one for an atmosphere?
Himself gasps breathless with but love to breathe;
Yea, I am safe from him if I can love.
And love I can, through Christ who strengthens me,
Whatever natural force I feel to hate.
I love to love, it is my chief delight;
I triumph by it over all my foes.
The harder these my triumph make to win,
The more, since I must win it still by love,
To love they drive me, and increase my joy.
My triumph is my love, and my love's joy.
But thou my poem hear in praise of love:
With men's tongues speaking, and with angels', yet,
Love lacking, I am sounding brass become,
Or clanging cymbal. Prophecy though mine,
And mysteries all to grasp, and knowledge all,
And mine though be all faith so as to move
Mountains, I yet, love lacking, nothing am.
And though I lavish all I own in alms,
And though I yield my body to be burned,
Yet I, love lacking, am naught profited.
Love suffers long, is kind, love envies not,
Love does not vaunt herself, is not puffed up,
Deports herself in no unseemly wise,
Seeks not her own, is not provoked, imputes
Not evil, at unrighteousness no joy
Feels, but her joy has with the truth, bears up
Against all things, all things believes, all things
Hopes, undergoes all things. Love never fails;
But whether there be prophecies, they will
Be done away, tongues whether, they will cease,
Whether there knowledge be, it will have end.
For we in part know, and we prophesy
In part; but when that which is perfect comes,
Then that which is in part will pass away.
When I a child was, as a child I talked,
I did my thinking as a child, I used
My reason as a child; since I a man
Have grown, the child's part I have put aside.
For now we darkly, through reflection, see,
But face to face then. Now I know in part,
But then shall I know fully, even as I
Also am fully known. And now these three
Bide, faith, hope, love; but of these chief is love.'
"Stephen, how little Shimei guesses," Paul
Said, having thus his hymn of love rehearsed,
"The secret triumph ever over him
I celebrate, in loving him, despite
His hating me, and seeking to destroy!
Who knows but God to love will win him yet?"
A certain gentle humor exquisite
Enlivened and commended this from Paul.
But Stephen answered not; indignant love
Swelled in his heart, and choked within his throat
The way of words, and dimmed his eyes with tears.
Thus at Antipatris arrived, they halt:
Here Stephen, nursing other purpose not
Disclosed, disclosed to Paul a wish he had
To go back with the infantry returning,
And reassure his mother that all was well.
Paul sped his nephew with his benison;
And, after rest had, and refreshment meet,
Himself thence, with the escort cavalry
Safeguarded, on to Cæsarea rode,
Not lonely, though alone, and prisoner.
BOOK V.
SHIMEI AND YOUNG STEPHEN.
Stephen, having returned, goes at once to the chiliarch, his secret
purpose being to convict Shimei of his crime, through certain
evidence which he thinks he can bring to bear on the case. To the
youth's disappointment and chagrin, he is received coldly and
repellently by the chiliarch now much out of humor as a sequel to
his disagreeable interview with Shimei. Dismissed crestfallen to go,
Stephen is suddenly confronted at the door by Shimei, at that moment
arriving in obedience to a summons from the chiliarch. The mutual
encounter has the effect on the chiliarch observing it, to change
his attitude toward Stephen, making it favorable again. Shimei is
sent to Cæsarea under suspicion; where Felix, the governor, plans a
hearing for the prisoner Paul.
SHIMEI AND YOUNG STEPHEN
At Cæsarea soon the Sanhedrim,
By deputy and advocate, appeared
Before the bar of Felix governor,
To implead the prisoner Paul.
The high-priest brought
The weight and dignity of rulership
Supreme among his people, to impress
On Felix fitting sense of the grave cause
Now come before him to be judged. Thin veiled
Beneath the decent fair exterior show
Of only public and judicial aim
And motive in that ruler of the Jews
(The high-priest Ananias), deep there wrought
A leaven of personal vindictiveness
Twofold, sullen resentment of affront,
And, added, that least placable, that worst
Hatred, the hatred toward a brother wronged.
Whom he, from his own judgment-seat--profaned
Thus by his profanation of the law--
Had wantonly commanded to be smitten
Upon the mouth, this outraged man must now
Be proved, forsooth, a wretch unmeet to live.
But Shimei, as prime mover, was left, too,
To be prime manager, of all. Far less
Festive, than his old wont, in exercise
Of that exhaustless wit his own in wile,
Serious he now, yea even to sadness, seemed.
And reason was. For Claudius Lysias
Had summoned him to presence in the fort;
And there, hap not to have been imagined, he,
Besides the haughty Roman chief, had met
Another face more welcome scarce than his.
Young Stephen's purpose, not revealed, had been
To move some action against Shimei.
This gentle Hebrew youth inherited
Large measure of the wilful spirit high
That in the blood of all his kindred ran.
Of his own motion he, without advice,
Nay, headstrong, in the teeth of thwart advice,
Which, though he sought it not, he full well felt
In current counter to his wish--self-moved
Thus, and self-willed, Paul's nephew had resolved
To try what might to him be possible--
By putting in the place of the accused
Instead of the accuser's, that base man,
His uncle's foe--to free his uncle's state,
Once and for all, from danger and annoy
Due to the restless hate of Shimei.
The friendly chiliarch was his first resort.
In one swift glance, which more was of the mind
Itself, perceiving as it were without
Organ, than of the eye with which it saw,
Stephen that night, upon the point of time
When Shimei was arrested and brought in,
A glimpse had caught of two receding forms
Of men upon the street, flying as seemed;
Whom instantly he knew to be the same
With that pair of conspirators to slay,
Whose whispers had revealed their plot to him:
These were the stout young fellows Shimei set
To lie in wait for the escaping Paul.
The moment they beheld their master seized,
They quickly had betaken them to flight;
But Stephen's mind flew faster than their feet,
And with intangible tether had them bound.
This his new observation of the twain
Made him secure of recognizing them
Whenever or wherever seen again.
With so much clue as this, no more, in hand,
To guide him in the quest of testimony
That might his crimes bring home to Shimei--
Supposed still safe in keeping at the fort--
Stephen his audience with the chiliarch sought.
The bright hope that he brought in coming, sprung
From grateful recollection of the grace
He found, that morning, in the Roman's eyes,
Was promptly damped to deep dejection now.
The chiliarch met him with a cold and sour
Severity of aspect that repelled,
Beyond the youth's capacity--unbuoyed,
For this occasion, with approving sense
Of well-advised attempt at least, if vain--
To front it with unruffled brow. Abashed
He stood, confused; the blood rushed to his face;
His tongue clung to his mouth's roof; and in all
He less looked like that youthful innocence
Which won the Roman so in his soft mood,
Than like the conscious guilt, uncovered now,
In Shimei's slant insinuation shown.
The chiliarch by reaction was relapsed
Into his sternest temper of disdain
Embittered by suspicious cynicism;
Apt sequel of the interview prolonged
With Shimei, and the final passionate
Ejection of that Hebrew from the fort.
He now awaiting Shimei, summoned back
Once more, to be to Cæsarea sent,
Here was that Stephen--despicable he
Too, doubtless, like his despicable race!
Such was the prompt involuntary set,
Inhospitable, of the chiliarch's thought,
For welcome of the youth before him there.
To Stephen's stammering words about those men,
And how they might be made to testify
Of Shimei's desperate plot to murder Paul,
Thus bringing Shimei to deservéd doom,
The Roman tartly said: "Aye, aye, young sir,
I think it like, seems altogether like.
You Jews could, all of you, I doubt not, swear
Of one another, brethren as ye be,
Things damnable enough to crucify
Ye all, and, what is more, for just that once,
Swear true! But thanks, lad, I have had my fill
At present of these proffered services."
The manner was dismissory, more even
Than were the words, and Stephen bowed to go.
But his own manner in thus bowing changed,
Although he spoke not, to such dignity,
Recovered from his discomposure late,
So instantly recovered, and so pure--
Adulterate in no trace with hardihood--
A dignity comportable with youth,
While eloquent of virtue and high mind,
And, like a robe, so beautifully worn
Over a person and a gesture fair,
That Claudius Lysias, cynic as he was
That moment, seeing could not but admire.
He, on the point to bid the youth remain,
Wavering, not quite persuaded,--at the door,
Bowing his different bow, stood Shimei;
That sight and contrast fixed his wavering mind.
"Stay thou, my lad," abruptly he exclaimed--
Wherewith another fall the countenance fell
Of Shimei, cringing, to his footsteps glued.
"Look ye on one another, ye two Jews,"
The chiliarch in a sudden humor said;
"I have a fancy I should like to see
How two reciprocal accusers such
As you are, rogues both--though one young, one old,
In roguery--if your mutual witness hold--
I say, the fancy takes me to observe
How two accusers of each other, like
Yourselves, confronted in close quarters thus,
Will severally enjoy each other's stare."
An indescribable something in the tone
Of Claudius Lysias speaking thus, or look
Perhaps, couched in the eye or on the face
Playing, signified clear to Shimei
That the same words were differently meant
To Stephen and to him; spoken to him
In earnest, in but pleasantry to Stephen.
Stephen's high air, in proud sense of his worth
Wronged by misdoubt, had Shimei led astray.
He saw it as a sign of prosperous suit--
Doubtless against himself--just finished there.
Already tuned to fear, his conscious mind,
Quite disconcerted by this fresh surprise
Of some detection that he could not guess,
Suddenly wrote abroad on all his mien
A patent full conviction of himself.
As more and more his heart misgave him, worse
Ever and worse his brow was discomposed.
The lively opposite of Shimei's change
Was meantime making Stephen's face more fair.
He, at the chiliarch's mating of himself
With Shimei, though in veriest raillery meant,
Felt all the soul of manliness in him
Stung to its most resistant; as he turned,
Obedient to the chiliarch's word, and looked
At Shimei, such transfigurement there passed
Upon him that he stood there glorified.
An infinite repellence seemed to ray
From out his eyes, and put impassable
Remove between him and that other, while
Ascendance, as peculiar to a race
And rank of being wholly different,
Endued him, like a natural right to reign.
Such kingly to such servile seen opposed,
Surprised the chiliarch into altered mood.
"Enough," said he; and, writing while those stayed,
He gave to Shimei what he wrote to read.
It was a letter Shimei should himself
Convey to Felix governor; it ran:
"Who brings this is a rascal, as I judge;
He comes to accuse the Jewish prisoner Paul.
Detain him, if thee please, to see the end;
The end should be perhaps a cross for _him_!"
Wincing, the miscreant read; he, reading, felt
Draw, from Rome's hand, the coil about his neck.
Choking for speech, he, ere he found it, heard
The chiliarch say, with voice hard like a flint:
"Thou hast thine errand; tarry not, but go.
Nay, bide a moment; let the youngster see
What message I have given thee to bear;
Then, if so chance thou lose it on the way,
He can supply thy lack of carefulness!"
His air that of the miser who, compelled,
Gives up gold hoarded, like his own heart's blood,
Shimei, with griping pangs, in sick recoil
Of grudging overmastered to submit,
Yielded, as if he were withholding it,
The hateful letter into Stephen's hand.
Stephen, as one not daring otherwise,
Deigned a reluctant look, that, seeking not,
Yet seized, the sense of that which Shimei showed;
Softened, he gave the parchment back to him.
Prodded with such oblique sarcastic spur
To heed of sinister commission such,
Shimei withdrew, a miserable man.
The chiliarch then to Stephen--who, at once
Pity of Shimei's utter wretchedness,
Shame of his utter abjectness, conceived--
Said, with changed tone: "My lad, I think thee true;
That miscreant vexed me into petulance.
Thou hast not altogether missed thy mark
In coming hither now, although I thus
Seem to let Shimei for the present slip.
Follow him, if thou wilt, to Cæsarea.
With letter of Bellerophon in charge,
He carries his own sentence thither hence;
Watch it--if slow in execution, sure!"
Sobered by triumph, and not triumphing,
Made pensive rather, Stephen went away.
Forth from the hour when Shimei, so dismissed,
Shrank out of presence at Antonia
Collapsed in spirit as in mien and port,
He to the end was seen an altered man.
Dejected, absent, like a criminal
Convicted of his crime, sentenced to die,
Though day of death unfixed, imprisoned not,
Nay, moving, as if free, about the world,
To view not different from his fellow-men,
Yet with a sense forever haunting him
Of doom uncertainly suspended still
Above him, that at any moment might
In avalanche descend upon his head--
So he lived joyless, the elastic spring
Broken that buoyed him to his wickedness.
But loth he had to Cæsarea gone,
Where, with wry looks and deprecation vain,
He gave the letter to the governor;
Had he, to ease his case, dared fail the trust,
The failure would have failed his case to ease,
Nay, rather, would have harder made his case,
Since Stephen could report what he did not,
And could besides report his negligence.
But Shimei dared not fail; he knew offence,
Added, of disobedience, would but draw
Speedier the dreaded danger ruining down.
Joy is to some a spring of energy,
Which failing, all their force for action fails--
They having in themselves no virtue proof
Against the palsying touch ill fortune brings;
Of such was Shimei. In his broken state,
His measures he took feebly, without hope.
The wish--which with the expectation joined
Would have made hope--yea, even the very wish,
That life and strength of hope, was well-nigh dead
In him; for he no longer now desired
The thing he wrought for still, under constraint
Of habit, and that strange necessity
Which sense of many eyes upon him fixed
To watch him working the familiar wont
Of Shimei, bred within this wretched man,
Forcing him like a fate.
Fit tool he found
In one Tertullus--hireling Roman tongue,
Or function mere, not organ--who, for price,
Spoke customary things accusing Paul
To Felix, for the Jews; these joined their voice
In sanction of the truth of what he said.
But Paul denying their base charges all,
Denying and defying to the proof,
The governor postponed them for a time.
Paul he remanded into custody,
But bade with courteous ways distinguish him;
Whereof the secret cause was, not a sense
In Felix of the righteousness of Paul,
With therefore sweet magnanimous desire
To grace him what in loyalty he could--
Of no such height was Felix capable--
The cause none other was than Shimei;
Who Paul however served not, but himself.
For Shimei dreaded what he seemed to seek,
The sentence "Guilty," at the judgment-bar
Of Felix on this prisoner Paul pronounced;
Dreaded it, lest appeal therefrom be claimed
By Paul to the imperial ear at Rome.
He himself, Shimei, then might be compelled
To go likewise the same unwelcome way,
Though witness and accuser only named,
Yet labelled target for suspicious eyes,
Where eyes suspicious oft portended doom.
So he to Felix--less with words than signs,
Mysterious looks and reticences deep,
As of a man who could, if but he would,
And were it wise, tell much that, left untold,
Might well be guessed from things kept back, yet thus,
And thus, and thus (in Shimei's pantomime)
Winked with the eye and with the shoulder shrugged--
Hint signalled that there hid a gold mine here,
For who, with power like his, conjoined the skill
To make it yield its treasure to demand;
This Paul had wealthy friends who gladly would
Buy at large price indulgences for him.
Let Felix hold out hopes, deferring still,
Suffer his friends to come and visit Paul,
Give hearings to his case, but naught decide,
Weary him out, and them, with long delays--
Till a realm's ransom woo his clutch at last.
Now Shimei thus consummately contrived;
For Felix was a mercenary soul,
Who governed in the spirit of a slave.
He, therefore, doubting not that Shimei
(Confessed the player of a double part,
Pander to him, accuser for the Jews)
Was all the rascal that the chiliarch guessed,
Yet deemed he saw his profit in the man.
He could use Shimei to his own behoof,
In winning what he coveted from Paul;
Meantime remitting not his hold on him
For final expiation of his crimes.
The two, well fitted to each other, thus
Played each his several sordid game with each,
And neither by the other was deceived,
Both equally incapable of trust,
As equally unworthy to be trusted--
Until, two years accomplished, Felix fell
From power at Cæsarea; when, his greed
Long disappointed of its glut of gain
From Paul, he left him there in prison. He hoped
The dreaded accusation of the Jews
For his abuse of power, surpassing bound,
Might less fierce follow him to Rome, should he,
By that injustice added, in their eyes
His thousands of injustices atone.
Moreover Felix hated Paul, as hates
The upbraided ever his upbraider, when,
The conscience yielding, yet the will withstands.
For, during the imprisonment of Paul,
And that prolonged delay of trial due
Him, this base freedman--basely raised to be
A ruler--as a pleasure to his wife,
Devised a feast of eloquence for her.
She was a Jewess, beautiful as vile,
And as in beauty brilliant, so in wit;
She would enjoy it, like a spectacle,
To sit, in emulated state, a queen
Beside her husband in his judgment-hall,
And there, at ease reclined, her lord's delight,
In her resplendent and voluptuous bloom,
Disport herself at leisure, eye and ear
Tasting their satisfaction to the full,
To see and hear her famous countryman
Expound his doctrine and defend his cause.
Not often, in his rude Judæan seat
Of government in banishment, could he
Proffer the stately partner of his throne
An equal hope of entertainment rare.
So, royal in their pomp of progress, came,
One day, the lustful Felix with his bride,
Adulterous Drusilla, guilty pair!
And, on his throne of judgment seating him,
Bade Paul before them, in his prisoner's chain,
To burn the splendors of his oratory
In pleading for the faith of Jesus Christ--
Fresh pastime to the cloyed and jaded sense
For pleasure those voluptuaries brought!
Uncalculated thrills, not of delight,
That lawless Roman ruler had purveyed
Himself, to chase each other in their chill
Procession through the currents of his blood,
And, shuddering, shoot along his nerves, and freeze
His marrow!--conscience in him her last sign
Making perhaps that day.
But will he heed?
Or will the terrors of the world to come
Vainly appal him with the eternal fear?
BOOK VI.
PAUL BEFORE FELIX.
Paul discourses solemnly before Felix and his queen Drusilla,
treating the topics of righteousness, self-control, and impending
judgment. The effect is to make Felix show visible signs of
discomposure on his judgment-seat. Drusilla, apprehensive of
consequences disastrous to herself from her wicked husband's
awakened remorse and fear, invokes the intervention of Simon, that
Cyprian Jewish sorcerer who had at first been instrumental in
bringing the guilty pair together. Simon plays upon the superstition
of Felix with his pretended magic arts.
PAUL BEFORE FELIX.
The power of the Most High, descending, fell
On Paul, as, led of soldiers, he came in,
Bound, at the mercy of the governor,
And took his station in that presence proud.
At once, but without observation, changed
Became the parts of Felix and of Paul.
Paul, from a prisoner of Felix, now
To Felix was as captor and as judge;
And Felix was as prisoner, bound, to Paul.
Paul his right hand in manacles stretched forth,
As if it were a scepter that he swayed,
And said: "Most excellent lord Felix, hear,
And thou, Drusilla, unto Felix spouse!
Obedient, at thy bidding, I am come
To make thee know the faith in Jesus Christ,
And wherefore I obey it, and proclaim.
Know, then, that Jesus, He of Nazareth,
The Crucified of Calvary, is Christ,
The Christ of that Jehovah God Most High
Who by His word created heaven and earth,
And Him anointed to be Lord of all.
God was incarnate in Him here on earth,
To reconcile the world unto Himself;
And I beseech men--I, ambassador
From Him, as if the Lord God did by me
Beseech--beseeching them, 'Be reconciled
To God.'
"For all men everywhere are found
By wicked works God's enemies; on all,
God's wrath, weight insupportable, abides;
A message this, that down from heaven He brought,
That Christ of God, that Savior of the world.
But His atonement lifts the load of wrath,
Which down toward hell the sinking spirit weighed,
Lifts, nay, transmutes it to a might of love,
Which bears the spirit soaring up to heaven.
'Believe in Jesus, and be reconciled
To God'; that is the gospel which I preach.
Obey my gospel, and be saved--rebel,
And pray the mountains to fall down on thee
To hide thee from the wrath of God, and hide
Thee from the wrath, more dreadful, of the Lamb.
For Lamb was Jesus, when on Calvary
In sacrifice for sin He died; but when,
Resurgent from the tomb, above all height
Into the heaven of heavens He rose, and sat
On the right hand of glory and of power
With God, then the Lamb slain from far before
The world was founded, by His blood our guilt
To purge, as capable of wrath became,
As He before was capable of love.
He burns against unrighteousness, in flame
Which, kindling on the wicked, them devours.
There is no quenching of that fearful flame,
As ending none is there of what it burns;
The victim lives immortally, to feed
The immortal hunger of that vengeful flame.
It swifter than the living lightning flies,
To fasten on its victim in his flight;
No refuge is there in the universe
For fugitive from it. Thou, Felix, knowest
No hider can elude the ranging eyes,
No runner can outrun the wingéd feet,
No striver can resist the griping hands,
That to the emperor of the world belong;
Whom Cæsar wishes, Cæsar has for prey."
Paul fixed his gaze point-blank on Felix while
These things he said, not as with personal aim--
Which might have been resented, being such,
Resented, and thereby avoided quite--
Rather as if, through body, he beheld
His hearer's soul, and set it with his eyes
Far forward into the eternal world,
And there saw the fierce flame he spoke of, fast
Adhering or inhering, burn that soul,
With burning unescapable by flight
Or refuge through the universe of God.
Paul's vision was so vivid that his eyes
Imprinted what he saw upon the soul
Of Felix, that almost he saw it too.
He stared and listened, with that thought intense
Wherewith sometimes the overmastering mind
Will blind the eyesight and the hearing blur.
A sense of insecurity in power,
Bred in him by his consciousness of crime,
With dread, too, of the moment, then perhaps
Already nigh! when that omnipotence,
That omnipresence, that omniscience, Rome's,
Might beset _him_, to cut him off from hope--
This feeling blindly wrought the while beneath,
Like struggling earthquake, to unsettle him;
Thus weakened, half unconsciously, his will
Fell childlike-helpless in the power of Paul.
Now fear hath torment, and to Felix, prey
Of fear with torment, Paul still added fear;
Perhaps his fear intolerable grown
Might save the sufferer from the thing he feared!
Paul further said: "O Felix, Cæsar's sway
Over this world, inevitable thus,
Subduing all, is yet but image pale
Of the supreme dominion absolute
Which to Christ Jesus in the heaven belongs.
The captives of the emperor need but wait
Patient a while and sure release arrives;
Since death at least, to all, or soon or late,
Comes, one escape at last from Cæsar's power,
Who owns no empire in that world beyond.
But of that world beyond, no end, no bound,
Whither we all must flee in fleeing hence,
Still the Lord Christ abides eternal King;
Death is but door to realm of His more wide.
Here, the sheathed sword of His avenging ire
Will sometimes touch, undrawn, with blunted edge,
The wincing conscience of the wicked man
That knows himself a criminal unjudged.
Those touches are the mercy of the Lord
That would betimes the guilty soul alarm;
Those pains of conscience are the smouldering fires
Which, quenched not now in sin-atoning blood,
Will, blown to fury, by and by burst forth,
And, fuelled of the substance of the soul,
That cannot moult its immortality,
One inextinguishable vengeance burn.
"'Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings, be ye
Instructed, judges of the earth;' so God
Cries in our Scriptures in the ears of men.
'Kiss ye the Son,' He says, 'in homage kiss
The Son of Mine anointing, Christ the Lord,
Kiss Him lest He be angry, and His wrath
Ready to be enkindled you devour.
But in the living scriptures of the soul
Itself, the holy word of God in man,
The selfsame admonition beats and burns--
If men would read it and would understand!
The raging of desire not satisfied,
The sickness of the surfeit of desire,
The ravages of passion uncontrolled,
And waste of being, by itself consumed,
To bury or deface what else were fair--
Like lava spouted from the crater's mouth
Of the volcano burning its own bowels
To belch them torrent over fertile fields--
These things, O Felix, in the conscious heart,
Are muffled footfalls of oncoming doom."
Peculiar commination seemed to flame,
Volcanic, in Paul's manner as he spoke.
One might have felt the figure prophecy--
For some fulfilment in this present world
Impending to be symbol of his thought--
His likening of the self-consuming soul,
Disgorging desolation round about,
To a volcano its own entrails burning,
And in eruption pouring them abroad;
So real, so living, so in imminent act,
Paul's speaking made his fiery simile.
Drusilla, when, long after, with her son
Agrippa, born to Felix, overwhelmed
In that destruction from Vesuvius
Which under ashen rain and lava flood
Pompeii rolled with Herculaneum,
Like Sodom and Gomorrah whelmed again!--
Drusilla then, despairing, for one fierce
Fleet instant--instant endless, though so fleet--
Saw, as from picture branded on her brain,
Heard, as from echo hoarded in its cells,
The very image of the speaker's form,
His posture, gesture, features in their play,
These, and the tones, reliving, of the voice
Wherewith, in Cæsarea judgment-hall,
He fulmined, yea, as if this self-same wo!
But Paul, no pause, immitigably said:
"Belshazzar, Babylonian king of old,
Once in a season of high festival
Held in his palace with a thousand lords,
Saw visionary fingers of a hand
Come out upon the palace walls and write.
Then that king's countenance was changed in him,
In answer to the trouble of his thoughts;
The very jointings of his loins were loosed,
And his knees, shaken, on each other smote.
In language that he did not understand,
But prophet Daniel told the sense to him,
Belshazzar had his own swift ruin read.
Thus, O lord Felix, in our hours of feast,
Oft, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN,
Dread warning to us that the end is come,
That we have been full proved and wanting found,
That now our vantage must another's be--
Appalling words of final doom from God,
In lurid letters live along the walls
Of the soul's pleasure-house--for who will heed!
Remorses, doubts, recoils, forebodings, fears,
And fearful lookings for of judgment nigh,
Previsions flashed on the prophetic soul
Refusing to be hooded not to see--
These are handwritings on the wall from God;
They, syllabling the sentence of His ire,
Spell MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN,
For pleasure-lovers lost in lust and pride.
Well for Belshazzar, if betimes he heed!"
Had Felix been alone, deep in the dark,
And a wide waste of solitude around,
A comfort it had seemed to him to loose
One mighty agitation of his frame
And shiver his blood-curdling terror off;
Or, in one wanton, wild, voluptuous cry,
Shriek it into the startled universe.
But, seated there upon his throne of power,
Drusilla by his side regarding him,
To tremble, like a culprit being judged,
Before a culprit waiting judgment! He,
With last resistant agony of will,
Kept moveless his blanched lips, and on his seat
Sat stricken upright, and so stared at Paul.
There Paul stood tranquil, choosing thunderbolts,
And this the thunderbolt that last he launched:
"Hearken, O Felix. In the clouds of heaven,
Attended by the angels of His might,
The Lord Christ Jesus I behold descend.
The trumpet of the resurrection sounds,
And sea and land give up their wakened dead;
These all to judgment hasten at His call:
The books are opened and the witness found;
All the least thoughts of men, with all their words
And deeds, all their dumb motions of desire,
Their purposes, and their endeavors all,
Are written in the record of those books.
They blaze out in the light of that great day.
Like lightning, fixed from fleeting, on the sky;
Deem not one guilty can his guilt conceal.
A parting of the evil and the good;
The good at His right hand He bids sit down,
The awful Judge, omnipotent as just;
The evil, frowning, bids from Him depart.
Swift, them departing--who would not know God,
And not obey the gospel of His Son--
He, taking vengeance, follows in their flight
With flaming fire and dreadful punishment,
Destruction everlasting from His face,
From the Lord's face, and glory of His power!"
The shudder that had slept uneasy sleep
Within the breast of Felix lulling it,
Woke startled at these minatory words
Spoken as with the voice of God by Paul.
That couchant shudder from its ambush broke,
And openly ran wantoning over all
The members of the terror-stricken man.
But the cry clamoring in him for escape,
To ease the anguish of his mortal fear,
Felix found strength to modulate to this,
In forced tones uttered, and with failing breath:
"Go thy way this time, Paul; at season fit
Hereafter I will call for thee again."
The soldier duly led his prisoner out,
And Felix was full easily rid of Paul;
Of Paul, but of Paul's haunting presence not
The image of that orator in chains,
The solemn echo of the words he spoke,
Swam before Felix, sounded in his ears,
So real, the real world round him seemed less real.
Drusilla, to her discomposure, found
Her husband strangely alien from his spouse;
The blandishments so potent with him late
Lost on an absent or repellent mind.
The awe of Felix under Paul's discourse
She had remarked with unconcerned surprise.
She now recalled it with a doubt, a fear.
The jealous thought woke in her: 'If my lord
Should, overwrought in conscience, cast me off!
What byword and what hissing then were I,
Stranded and branded an adulteress!
I, who the scion of a kingly house,
Haughty Antiochus Epiphanes,
Haughtily spurned as suitor for my hand,
Because he would not for my sake be Jew;
Who wedded then Azizus, eastern king,
Willing to win me at the price I fixed;
Who next with scandal parted from his bed,
To snatch this dazzle of a Roman spouse--
_I_ to be now by him flung to the dogs!
All at the beck of an apostate Jew,
Arraigned a culprit at his judgment-bar!
Drusilla, rouse thee, say, It must not be!
Drusilla, arm thee, swear, It shall not be!'
She summoned straight that Cyprian sorcerer who
Had played the pander's part between herself
And Felix, when they twain at first were brought
In guilt together. "Simon, know," she said,
"I with cause hate this Jewish prisoner Paul.
He, insolence intolerable, is fain
To come between my Roman lord and me.
Withstand him, and undo his hateful spell."
"His hateful spell, O stately queen, my liege,"
Said Simon, "I far rather would assay
Unbinding from thy spouse's soul enthralled,
Than him withstand, the binder of that spell,
Meeting him face to face. At Paphos once,
Of Cyprus, Elymas, a master mind
In magic--at the court proconsular
Of Sergius Paulus, regent of the isle,
Wielding great power--withstood this self-same Paul.
But Paul denounced a curse deipotent
Against him, and forthwith upon his eyes
A mist fell and a darkness, that he walked
Wandering in quest of one to lead him, late
Redoubtable magician, by the hand.
This conjuration on the conjurer,
Himself proconsul Sergius Paulus saw,
And, overpowered with wonder and with fear,
Roman and governor as he was, became
Fast docile dupe and devotee to Paul.
"Perhaps indeed there was a cause for this
Older in date than such a feat of Paul's.
Long years before, when Paul and he were young,
By chance they fared together on the way
Damascus-ward out of Jerusalem,
When, nigh Damascus, of a sudden, Paul
On Sergius tried a novel magic trick.
In broad noon, with unclouded sun ablaze
Above him, burning all that tract of sand,
He flashed a sheen of mimic lightning forth,
With stage effect of thunder overhead
Muttering words. Thereon as dead fell Paul,
Yet to that unintelligible voice
From heaven intelligible answer made,
Pretending dialogue with some unseen
High dweller in the upper air, with whom
Colluding, he thenceforth his spells of power
Might surer, deadlier, fling on whom he would.
Sergius was then too full of youth to yield;
The lusty blood in him fought off the spell;
But somewhat wrought upon, no less, was he,
And secretly, in mind and will, prepared
To fall in weaker age a prey to Paul.
A potent master Paul is in his kind,
Owning some secret from us others hid,
That makes our vaunts against him void and vain.
I would not needlessly his curse provoke
By too close quarters with him front to front.
His spell on Felix I may hope to solve,
Let me but have thy husband by himself,
In privileged audience safe apart from Paul;
I will see Felix, but Paul let me shun."
So Simon to his moody master went,
And, well dispensing with preamble, said:
"What will mine excellent lord Felix please
Command the service of his servant in?"
"Unbidden thou art present," Felix frowned.
"So bidden I retire," the mage replied.
"Nay, tarry," with quick wanton veer of whim,
Said Felix, "tarry and declare to me,
If with exertion of thy skill thou canst,
What is it that this hour perturbs my thought?
Answer me that, pretender to be wise,
Or own thy weird pretensions nothing worth.
No paltering, no evasion, doubling none
In ambiguity like oracle,
But instant, honest, simple, true reply;
Else, I have done with all thy trumpery tricks,
Haply, too, with some certain fruits thereof
That thee buy little thanks, as me small joy."
"My master pleases to make hard demand,
In couple with condition hard, to-day,"
The sorcerer, with dissembled pleasure, said.
Simon full ready felt to meet his test;
For, in an antechamber to the hall
Of judgment, he, with Shimei too, had lurked,
And, overhearing Paul's denouncement, marked
The trepidation of the judge's mien.
"Lord Felix suffers from an evil spell
Cast on him by a wicked conjurer;"
So, with deep calculation of effect,
The sorcerer to the sovereign firmly said.
"A hit--perhaps," said Felix, some relief
Of tension to his conscience-crowded mind
Welcoming already in the hint conveyed;
"Repeat to me," he added, keen to hear,
"Repeat to me the phrasing of the spell;
That I may know it not a groping guess,
But certain knowledge, what thou thus hast said."
That challenge flung to Simon's hand the clue
He needed for his guidance in the maze.
He sees the Roman's superstitious mind
In grapple with imaginative awe
Infused by recollection of those words
Barbaric--of comminatory sound,
Though understood not, therefore dreaded more--
Which Paul, two several times, in his discourse,
Had solemnly recited in his ear.
"The spell," he said, "O Felix, that enthralls
Thee was of three Chaldæan words composed;
But one word was repeated, making four.
I dare not utter those dire syllables
In the fixed order which creates the spell.
My wish is to undo, and not to bind."
Felix was frightened, like a little child
Told ghostly stories in the dead of night;
He watched and waited, with set eye intense.
The conjurer, standing in struck attitude,
Made with his voice an inarticulate sign
Intoned in tone to thrill the listening blood.
Thereon, in silence, through the opening door,
With gliding motion, a familiar stole
Into the chamber, which now more and more,
To Felix's impressionable fears,
As if a vestibule to Hades was.
That noiseless minister to Simon gave
Into his master's hand a rod prepared.
"Hearken, lord Felix," low the conjurer said,
"Hearken and heed. Well needs it thou, with me,
Fail now in nothing through a mind remiss.
Hear thou aright, while I aright reverse
The order of the phrasing of that spell.
Beware thou think it even no otherwise
Than as I give it, weighing word and word.
I turn the sentence end for end about,
UPHARSIN, TEKEL, MENE, MENE, say;
All is not done, still keep thy mind intent,
And, with thine eyes now, as erst with thine ears,
Watch what I do, and let thy will consent."
Therewith his wizard wand he waved in air,
As who wrote viewless words upon the wind.
A hollow reed the wand he wielded was,
With secret seed asleep of fire enclosed.
This, at the end that in his hand he held;
Powder of sulphur at the other end
Was hidden in the hollow of the reed.
The sulphur and the fire, unconscious each
Of other, had, though neighboring, since apart,
Slept; for the sorcerer's minion brought the rod,
As first the sorcerer held it, levelled true.
But with the motion of the magian's hand,
The dipping virgule sent the ember down
The polished inner of its chamber-walls,
And breath let in to blow it living red,
Until it touched the sulphur at the tip.
Issue of fume there followed, edged with flame,
And wafting pungent odor from the vent,
Which, woven in circlet and in crescent, seemed
To knit a melting legend on the air.
"So vanish and be not, thou hateful spell,
And leave this late so vexéd spirit free!"
With mutter of which words, the sorcerer turned
To Felix, and thus farther spoke: "Breathe thou,
Lord Felix, from that bond emancipate.
Yet, that thou fall not unawares again
Beneath its power, use well a countercharm
I give thee, which, both night and day, wear thou
A prophylactic to thy menaced mind.
Gold--let the thought, the motive, the desire,
The purpose, and the fancy, and the dream,
Not leave thee nor forsake thee till thou die.
The sight, the sound, the touch, the clutch, of gold
Is sovereign absolution to a soul
Beset like thine with fear of things to be
Beyond the limit of this mortal state;
But, failing that, the thought itself will serve.
The thought at least must never absent be,
If thou wouldst live a freeman in thy mind."
'Freedman,' he would have said, but did not dare;
He had dared much already in his word,
'Freeman,' so nigh overt allusion glanced
At the opprobrious quality of slave,
Out of which Felix sprang to be a king.
To that, contempt and hatred of a lord
Served but from hard self-interest and from fear
Had irresistibly pressed Simon on
Beyond the bound of calculated speech.
Therewith, and waiting not dismissal, both,
The sorcerer and his minion, silently
Slid out of presence, and left Felix there
To rally as he might to his true self.
But, not too trustful to his sorcery,
Simon thought well to follow and confirm
The influence won on Felix through his art,
With worldly wisdom suited to his end.
He bade Drusilla open all access
Ever for Shimei to her husband's ear,
And even from her own treasure help him ply
Felix's avid mind with hope of gold--
Assured to him through earnest oft in hand--
An ample guerdon in due time to come
From Paul's rich friends to buy release for Paul.
At Cæsarea, in the judgment hall
That day, a solemn crisis of his life,
To Felix, he not knowing, there had passed.
Successfully, with sad success! he had
Resisted conscience in her last attempt,
Her last and greatest, to alarm a soul
Sufficiently to save it from itself.
At length, with the still process of the days
Dulled, and besides with opiate medicines drugged,
That conscience, so resisted, sank asleep,
Sank dead asleep in Felix, to awake
Never again. He indeed sent for Paul
Afterward oft, and talked with him at large;
But always only in that sordid hope--
Blown to fresh flame with seasonable breath,
That never failed, from Shimei, prompt in watch
To play on his cupidity--the hope
Of princely ransom from his prisoner won.
Such hope, so kept alive, led this bad man--
Although he hated Paul for shaking him
To terror, and to open shameful show
Of terror, in his very pitch of pride--
To palter with his prisoner, month by month,
Until the end came of his long misrule.
Then, hope deferred, defeated hope at last,
Let loose the hatred that in leash had lain
Of avarice, in the kennel of that breast,
And Felix found a sullen feast for it
In leaving Paul at Cæsarea bound.
BOOK VII.
"TO CÆSAR."
Paul, in preferred alternative to being judged, as was proposed,
by his murderous fellow-countrymen, appeals to Cæsar. He is
in consequence embarked on a ship for Rome. With him sail
certain kindred and friends of his, young Stephen among them.
Fellow-voyagers with him are also Felix and Drusilla, fallen now
from power and under cloud at Rome. Shimei and Simon the sorcerer
are of the company. The voyage is described, together with some of
the notable prospects of the coasts along which the vessel sails.
Shimei plots against the life of Paul. His plot is thwarted by young
Stephen, and the culprit is thrown into dungeon in the hold under
chains.
"TO CÆSAR."
During the years of his captivity
Under that wanton hand at Cæsarea,
Paul's sister, with her Stephen, brought their home
Thither, and there abode, for love of Paul;
That they might minister to him, and be
Ministered to by him in overflow
Of his far more exceeding rich reward.
Thither came also others of the Way,
Drawn by like love, to serve the same desire.
Of these was martyr Stephen's widow, Ruth,
A stately lady, with the matron's crown
Of glory in her wealth of silver hair,
And with the invisible pure aureole
Of living saintship radiant round her brow.
With her, a daughter, left to Ruth alone
Among her children--wedded all beside.
Her youngest-born, and fairest, was this one,
Eunicé named; a gift from God to Ruth
After her husband's martyrdom bestowed.
Euníce bore her father's image, lined
Softer with girlhood and with yielding youth,
Both in her features and her character.
The light that in her lovely countenance
Shone lovelier, was not playful, did not flash,
But sat there tempered to an equal beam,
Selené-like, that one might look upon,
From far or near, dwelling however long,
With sense of rest and healing to the eye;
You seemed to gaze upon the evening star
In sole possession of a twilight sky.
It was as if the father's zeal intense--
Which, kindling on his way to martyrdom,
Shone into brightness dazzling like the sun--
Descended to the daughter, were suffused
So, and so qualified, with woman's love,
That it undazzling like the moon became.
Eunicé, such in queenly womanhood,
Already to young Stephen was betrothed;
They waited only till the years should bring
Full ripeness, with meet circumstance, to wed.
Mary of Magdala kinswoman was
To Ruth. She, long afflicted, from before
Her marriageable season, with the haunt
In her of evil spirits vagabond
From the abyss, had, then to woman grown,
Met Jesus in His rounds of doing good
And been by Him delivered from her woe.
Seven demons, at His word, went forth from her,
Foul inmates of a mansion passing fair.
Mary to her Divine Deliverer gave
Her life thenceforth one long oblation up.
With other women, like herself in love
Of Him, she followed that Immanuel
Whithersoever He went about the world,
And of her treasure lavished on His need.
She stood bewailing when they crucified
Her Lord, and, after, at His sepulcher
The earliest, ere the breaking of the morn,
Saw two fair-shining angels clothed in white,
One at the head, the other at the feet,
Sit where the body of the Lord had lain.
These talked with Mary, who then turning saw,
But knew not, Jesus, face to face with her.
But Jesus to the weeping woman said:
"Mary!" and, in the hearing of her name,
She forthwith knew the voice that uttered it.
In her delight of love, she would have touched
His person, to assure still more her mind,
Save that again that voice, forestalling, gave
Enough assurance for such faith as hers.
Mary refrained her hand, but full well knew
No fleeting phantom, no dissolving show,
No spirit only, angel of the dead,
Stood there before her in the form of Him;
But her Lord Christ Himself, His flesh and blood.
This Mary Magdalené, in such wise
First to such joy delivered from such woe,
Then witness of so much theophany,
Thenceforward lived, unwedded to the end,
A life of watching for her Lord's return,
True to His promise, in the clouds of heaven;
Not idle watching, watching unto prayer
And unto almsdeeds to His glory done.
In the due sequel of the days, she came,
Bidden by her kinswoman Ruth, to share
Her widow's home with her and help her peace.
Thus then, the much-experienced Mary, meek
With wisdom and with holy meekness wise
(Her sorrow all to cheerful patience turned)
Unnoticed, not unfelt, as light, as strength
Unconscious, from the Source of strength, of light
Daily renewed, for guidance and support
To all within her happy neighborhood--
She also, Mary Magdalené, came
To Cæsarea, yoked in fellowship
With Ruth and Rachel, ministrant to Paul.
These all, with others, still intent to ease,
If but by sharing, what to Paul befell,
Were minded to go with him even to Rome--
When Festus, following Felix dispossessed,
Sent Paul away to Cæsar's judgment-seat,
Fulfilling so the wretched Shimei's fear.
For--Festus asking Paul (accused afresh
Before him from Jerusalem by Jews
Afresh to hope reviving with the change
From Felix to a different rulership):
"Wilt thou hence go unto Jerusalem,
And there by thine own countrymen be judged?"--
The wary wise apostle, well forewarned
Touching the deadly ambush, to waylay
Him in the journey thither, set once more
By Shimei, desperate and forlorn, had said:
"I am a prisoner at the judgment-bar
Of Cæsar; to my countrymen have I
No wrong done, as thou knowest; if any crime
Be mine, if I have perpetrated deed
Worthy of death, I do not shun to die.
But if of such act I be innocent,
Then no man may to them deliver me.
Roman am I, to Cæsar I appeal."
That answer was as word omnipotent,
To be unsaid, gainsaid, resisted, never;
And Festus was its servant and its thrall.
There sailed a ship of Adramyttium
(In Mysia of the Asian Province west,
From Lesbos in a deep recess withdrawn
Of bay in the Ægean, neighboring Troy)
Which touched at Cæsarea in its course
Coastwise, now northing on the Syrian shore.
Festus on board this vessel quartered Paul,
With soldiers to convoy him safe to Rome;
A maniple, by a centurion
Commanded, Julius named, a Roman he
Worthy of the imperial name he bore.
For he of clement grace was capable,
And of sagacity to know a man,
Though of despiséd race and charged with crime,
And, knowing, yield to him his manhood's claim.
Julius the profit of his virtue reaped;
He, in the issue of that voyage, will
Through favoring Paul save his own soul alive.
Those kin and lovers of the prisoner, who
Had for his name to Cæsarea come,
Would not forsake him sailing thence away;
They all, in one accord of fellowship,
Willed to sail with him on his way to Rome.
Besides these, there was Luke, a loyal soul,
Well learnéd in the lore of medicine,
Who loved Paul, and with joy his right hand lent,
Joining thereto the service of his eyes,
To fix for the apostle, at his need,
In written record, his thick-coming thoughts--
Ease for those weary organs overworn
With labors and with watchings; haply, too,
Touched with effect from that excess of light!
Historian of the voyage likewise Luke,
As, guided by the heavenly-guided Paul,
Who thus redeemed long prison hours else waste,
Historian of the life of Christ the Lord.
So many, with a man from Macedon,
A faithful, Aristarchus named, made up
The little company who loving hearts
Linked, shield to shield, in phalanx fencing Paul.
If they could serve him little on the sea,
At least they could be with him there; and then,
Should long delays of law, or of caprice,
Hold him still bound in Rome, they would be nigh
To bring him, daily, comfort of their love.
So, doubting not, not fearing, all for love,
These changed their fixéd gear for portable,
And on that ship of Adramyttium,
Facing whatever fortune unforeseen,
Cheerfully sailed--to tempest and to wreck!
Scarce well bestowed within that Asian bark,
Riding at anchor in her rock-fenced haven,
Those Christian pilgrims felt unwonted stir
Rouse round them on the crowded deck, with surge
On surge of movement, of expectancy,
As when a rising surf beats the sea-beach;
While, huddling here, here parting, all made way
To let who seemed high passengers of state
Enter with gorgeous pomp and pageantry,
Forerun and followed by a various train.
Felix it was, in sumptuous litter borne,
Drusilla with him, looking still the queen:
From power they fallen, were fallen not from pride.
With them, besides their troop of servitors,
Came other two, strange contrasts: Simon one,
The conjurer, fast to their joint fortune bound,
Beginning to be gray with rime of age,
As sinister grown in look through habit of guile;
A little lad tripped lightly by the side
Of Simon (who his evil genius looked)
Leading him by the hand upon the ship.
This little lad was little Felix, son
Of Felix and Drusilla, and dear to them,
Felix Agrippa the lad's double name.
Felix went summoned from his province back
To give at Rome account of his misrule.
Behind the sorcerer, following in that train,
Went last, as one who unattached would seem,
Shimei, compelled, though prisoner not; he strove
To carry lightly a too heavy heart.
Felix so much from Festus had obtained,
That Shimei should go forward with himself
As witness and accuser both to Paul;
Yet sinister suspicion shadowing him,
With information laid against, the while,
As the ringleader in a plot of crime.
The unhappy legate would at least detach
Thus from his own leagued Jewish foes, the Jew,
The one Jew, who, best knowing and hating him,
With the least scruple the most genius joined
To crowd him falling, to the farthest fall.
Fairly the lading and unlading done,
And all things ready, the good ship puts forth.
The oarsmen sat in triple ranks that rose
Tier above tier along the vessel's side;
With cheer of voice that timed their rhythmic stroke,
They, all together, many-handed, bent
Over the supple oars, well-hung arow,
And beat the waters into yeast and foam.
The wieldy trireme answered to their will,
And, past the towers and domes of Cæsarea,
Along a windless way under the lee
Of sea-walls fending from the bluff southwest,
Pushed to the north beyond the harbor-mouth.
Here the wind took her, freshening from behind,
And, sail all set, they rested from the oar.
Softly and swiftly, with such favoring gale,
They prosper, and, along the storied coast
Close cruising, soon discern the headland height,
Mount Carmel, with his excellency crowned
Of forest, and wide overlooking east
The plain outrolled of great Esdraelon
Washing with waves of green the mountain's feet--
Mountain whereon, in single-handed proof,
Elijah those four hundred priests of Baal
Gave to contempt; and, whence descending, he,
Red with indignant wrath for his Lord God,
By the brook Kishon slew them to His name.
This Paul remembered, as he passed; and deemed
He saw, hallowing the hills of Nazareth,
A halo from the childhood of the Lord.
From horn to horn across a crescent bay,
Embosomed by its arc of shore that curved
From Carmel round to Ptolemais north,
Faring, they could, well inland gazing, catch
A glimpse that vanished of the shapely cone
Of Tabor soaring in his Syrian blue.
Still onward, they next day the ancient seat
Of famous Sidon in Phoenicia reached--
Long ruined now, with her twin city Tyre;
Then, paired with her as mistress of the main,
Sidon sat leaning on her promontory,
Diffused along its northward-sliding slopes,
Like a luxurious queen on her divan.
Her sailors drove her keels to every haven,
And fetched her home the spoil of every clime.
To Farthest Thulé was the ocean wave
White with her sails or spumy to her oars.
Felix's hope of splendid bribe from Paul
Was brighter, that, of those who brought him cheer
In prison, some from wealthy Sidon came.
Here the ship touching, Julius, of his grace,
Granted to Paul the freedom of the shore.
With grateful gladness there, Sidonian friends,
Women and men, with children, welcome him.
Full in mid-winter, lo, a moment's spring!
So did a sudden-blossoming scene of home
Smile briefly bright about this homeless man,
This prisoner of the Lord--for the Lord's sake,
And for his own sake, dear--most human heart!
In whom his office of apostle wrought
To heighten, not to hurt, the faculty,
As it left whole the lovely need, of love.
He went thence clothed upon the more with sense
Of love his from so many, like a shield
Barring his heart from harm; and in his heart
Love buoyant more to bear what harm must fall.
From Sidon sailing, they, still northward driven
By wind that would not let them as they wished
Southwestward to the south of Cyprus isle
Win with right way the Mysian port, their aim--
So hindered, those Greek seamen warp their wake
With zigzag steering over whitening waves,
Until they feel that current of the sea,
Northwestward with perpetual ocean-stream
Washing the Cyprian shore to easternmost,
Thence veering toward the mainland, and along
The Asian border drawing to the west.
There, on such river in the ocean borne
Whither they will against a wind adverse,
They, wise with much experience of the sea,
Yet in the lee of neighboring Cyprus seek
A pathway sheltered from that roughening wind.
So, forward fairly, the Cilician sea
They traverse, with the mountains on their left,
Sheer through the length of sunny Cyprus drawn,
Building a sea-wall, to break off the wind.
Over against, to be descried, though far--
Well by two hearts on board that vessel felt,
Paul and his sister Rachel--to the north,
Lay the long reach of the Cilician shore.
Those (thither strained their homeward-yearning eyes)
There, tearful, saw remembered Taurus tower;
Whence river Cydnus rushing snow-cold down,
Wild from his mountain to the stretched-out plain,
Tames him his torrent to a pace more even;
And yields to be a navigable stream
For Tarsus, cleft two-fold, upon his banks,
A seaboard city inland from the sea.
Dear places of the playtime of their youth!
Gray river, with its everlasting flood,
Libation from the mountain to the sea;
The wharves, the ships, the sailors, travelled men,
Motley in garb and polyglot in speech;
The lading landed or to be embarked--
Mysterious bales of costly merchandise
Tempting to guess what treasures might be there!--
The hallowed sabbath in that Hebrew home
Islanded in its sea of heathenism!
The sabbath seasons in the synagogue!
The reverend Scriptures of the Jewish law,
By father and by mother taught to them,
So diligently taught, day after day,
And talked of in their ears, alike when they
Sat in their house and when they walked abroad,
And when they laid them down and when they rose;
Beheld too for a sign bound on the hand,
Likewise for frontlets worn between the eyes!--
All these things like a flood-tide of the sea
Swelled on those homesick kindred hearts, while they,
Brother and sister, distant many years
From what they saw, from what much more they felt,
Seen or unseen, on that familiar shore,
Alien and heathen, yet, being native, sweet,
Lapsed into musing of the pensive past.
Half they in words, but half in silence, mused.
"Far-off by years, yet more by difference far,"
Said Paul to Rachel, "are we two withdrawn
From what we were in our Cilician home.
That dearer is to us to dream of so,
Remembering and imagining, than it were
To see; it is not what we knew it once,
With the child's heart we carried in us then.
We should not find the places that we loved;
Nay, for we should not know them--with these eyes.
They have not so much changed, but we have changed."
"Yea, doubtless, changed we are," Rachel replied;
"Yet, I at least, O Saul, not so much changed
But that it would delight me still to see
Those haunts of happy childhood--more endeared
To me, as to my brother more, I know,
From father's and mother's memory hovering there.
I loved my mother and I honored her,
But my own motherhood has taught me how
I might have better loved and honored her!"
"We must not at past failures vainly pine"--
So Paul, to Rachel sorrowing tenderly--
"But rather let them make us wiser now.
Thy lesson, sister, let it teach us both
How to be children to our Father God.
These earthly kinships all are parable
Of the enduring kinships of the skies.
We are to be to God, as children dear,
What parents would their children were to them,
So full of love with fear, of trust with heed,
And imitators of His heavenly ways."
"And is it, brother," Rachel gently asked,
"Indeed to thee so easy ever thus
To lose the earthly in the heavenly thought,
And in the symbol find the symbolized,
That only, Saul? It is not so with me.
I love the letter, and I cling to it--
A little; at least when it is so fair
As I have found it in my motherhood.
The spirit is far fairer, I suppose,
But God has made this letter 'very good'!"
Rachel spoke thus with deprecation sweet,
The while a little liquid sparkle played
Of loving humor in her eyes half turned
Toward Stephen sitting nigh them but apart;
He and Eunicé sat together there.
"Cling to thy lovely letter," Paul replied,
"'A little,' as thou sayest it, not too much--
The 'little,' as the 'not too much,' God's will
For thee, my sister; and, a paradox!
The little will be more when not too much.
It is the spirit makes the letter dear,
Or dearest, as it is itself more dear.
We better love the earthly images
Of
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