BOOK VII.

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 things in heaven, when we those heavenly things

Themselves more than their loveliest shadows love.”

“O brother,” Rachel — suddenly her voice

Sunk to a vibrant low intensity

Of accent — said, hands clasped and eyes upturned

To him, “O brother, when such things thou sayest,

I tremble with unspeakable desire

To be what one must be to think such things.

But it is all too wonderful for me.

That inspiration of the Holy Ghost

Whereby thou knowest what else thou wouldst not know —

Perhaps that helps thee be, as well as know?”

“Nay, sister,” Paul replied, “it is not so.

That inspiration is a gift to me

For knowing only, not for being. Yea,

And even my gift to know is not for me,

More than for thee, my Rachel, and for all.

It is that all may know, God makes me know.

I profit by my awful trust from God

Of farther vision in His mysteries,

Only as I a faithful steward am

To part to others what I hold from Him:

Freely I have received freely to give.

But besides this there is a grace of God

In Jesus by the Holy Spirit given,

That comes alike to all obedient souls

To help them in the life of holiness.

The habit of the heavenly mind which thou

Attributest to me in what thou askest,

This I have learned, if it indeed be mine,

By being to the Spirit teachable,

Who teaches all as fast as each will learn.

He could far faster teach us, and He would,

If only we were teachable enough.

Alas, we strangely hold the flood-gate down

Not to let all the waiting fulness in.

But what of holy willingness I have

He gives, Who worketh in me both to will

And work, for the good pleasure of His name.”

“Amen!” breathed Rachel, in devout accord

With Paul's ascription of all good to Him.

By this, the night had settled on the sea,

An interlunar night bereft of stars,

For the dark azure of the deep was black

To blackness of the overhanging heaven

Hung thick with clouds. “See,” Rachel added soon,

“How the sky lowers! God fend us all from storm!

Good night, my brother. David's word for me,

‘ In peace will I both lay me down and sleep,

For Thou, Lord, only makest me to dwell

In safety.’” “Yea, in safety also here,

O sister,” Paul said; “for the sea is His,

He holds it in the hollow of His hand.”

Brother and sister parted with a kiss —

Kiss from the kindred habit of old time

Dear, but far dearer in a dearer love,

And, with some sense of reconcilement, sweet.

Therewith the sister to her pillow went;

But Paul abode to vigil on the deck.

He pacing to and fro, the night wore on,

And one by one his fellow-passengers

Withdrawing left him more and more alone.

A sheen of phosphorescence on the sea

Kindled along the running vessel's side,

And drew a trail of brilliance in her wake,

Splendid a moment and then vanishing,

Devoured by the immensity of dark

Which made it for that moment so intense.

Paul saw this, less admiring what he saw,

Beautiful though it was and wonderful,

Than musing what it seemed to mean for him:

‘ So my soul on her voyage through the world

Lights her own pathway as she moves along;

Bright ever where she is she makes her place,

And ever plunges on into the dark

Before her; but her latter end is light!’

Meanwhile, of all the lingerers on the deck

Amid that darkness, only two remained.

These, as they might, watched him now bending there

In wistful gaze over the vessel's side

Downward into the waters weird below:

Stephen was one; the other, Shimei.

But Shimei had crept later on the deck,

When the increasing dark veiled all from view

Save what was moving or what stood upright;

So he knew not of Stephen now reclined,

Motionless in a trance of pleasant dream,

There where Eunicé left him, when she too

With Rachel from the open night retired.

The youth had lapped him in a happy muse

Of memory of the things they twain that eve

Had shared in converse; it was like twilight

Prolonging softer the full light of day.

Shimei thought darkly:‘ Could yon leaning form

Lean farther, and embrace indeed the wave

He yearns toward, this enticing murky night!

There were redemption ready-wrought for me —

Who might be spared, forsooth, accusing whom

His own forestalling conscience had condemned,

( So it should look! ) and forced him on to die.

“Vengeance is mine and recompense,” as saith

Our Moses, hinting of a moment when

“Their foot shall slide.” Ha! Ha! It fits the case!

“Their foot shall slide!” Feet may be brought to slide!

The deck is slippery with the spray; a tip

Forward above, with a trip backward, so,

From underneath’ — and Shimei acted out

In pantomimic gesture his quick thought;

‘ An accidental movement, were it seen,

But it would not be seen. A fine dark night,

No moon, no stars, and the whole hollow sky

Ink-black with clouds that when ere long they break

Will spit ink-rain into an inky sea!

Finger of God! It were impiety

Not to obey a pointing such as this.’

His propense thought plunged him a step toward Paul.

Stephen hereon, stretched out upon the deck,

Marking the sinister action of the man

Shadowed upon the dark, a denser dark,

Noiselessly gathered up his members all,

Ready to rush at need to rescue, yet

Reserved, alert, to watch and to await,

Like leopard couchant tense in poise to spring.

That instant, a new dimness in the dark,

A swimming outline, figure of a man

Approaching, with a rustle of approach

Hinted, no more, amid the rising wind.

This Stephen knew, and Shimei, both at once.

Shimei recoiled; he thought,‘ Well paused for me!

I might have been detected, after all!’

Then, gliding toward that shadowy moving form,

He met — a Roman soldier, front to front,

Nigh Stephen where he lay in ambuscade

Unpurposed, but now vigilant all ear

For what might pass between those men so met.

A sudden shift of phase to Shimei's thought,

In altered phase persistent still the same.

The desperate fancy seized him to essay

Corrupting that custodian of Paul.

A helpless fixed fatuity of hate,

A dull insistent prodding from despair,

Robbed him of reason, while of cunning not:

He could warp wisely toward an end unwise.

Suspected by the Roman, by the Jew

No longer trusted as of old — since seen,

Those years at Cæsarea, changed and chilled

So from his pristine ardor in pursuit

Of Paul — Shimei saw nothing now before

Him in the future but the nearing close

In a blind alley, opening none beyond,

Of the strait way wherein perforce he walked.

One gleam of light, of possible light, ahead,

He now descried. If Paul could somehow be

Utterly cancelled from his case, no Paul

Anywhere longer in the world, and if,

Ah, if, O rapture! Paul could disappear

Confessing guilt by seeming suicide —

That were the one deliverance left to hope,

Hope if forlorn, at least, at least, a hope.

Shimei his foot set softly in the snare.

With slow and sly ambages of approach,

He sounded if the soldier were of stuff

To be in safety tampered with, and how.

Close at his feet, but guarded from their touch

By a low heap of cordage coiled between,

There Stephen lay the while, a breathless corpse,

And listened — with his body and his mind

Both utterly all organ to attend —

As Shimei with that shifty cunning his,

Insidious, like the entrance of disease,

Wormed him into the bosom of his man,

Instilling the temptation, sweet with bribe,

To make away with his Jew prisoner.

It would but give the wretch's wish effect —

So Shimei glozed with subtle speciousness —

Should now his gentle keeper intervene

To end the endless waverings of a mind

On self-destruction bent, a suicide

Who only lacked the courage of despair,

By tossing Paul headforemost overboard.

Three points thereby were gained, and nothing lost:

A criminal would meet his just desert,

One fain to die his heart's desire obtain,

And he, the soldier, no one wiser, take

The profit, gold in hand, of a good deed.

“Thou knowest,” the tempter said, “the feel of gold,

The weight,” and therewith thrust some pieces broad

Into the soldier's hand, the antepast

And warrant of a ready rich reward.

If question should arise involving him,

Why, nothing easier than to say and swear,

The prisoner, conscious of his guilt, and now

Quite at the end of all his hopes by wile,

Had used the favoring cover of the night

To make a sudden spring into the brine.

He, heedful of his duty and his charge,

Had promptly put the utmost effort forth

To seize him, and defeat the dire attempt.

But desperation was too masterful

In force and quickness, to be so forestalled.

The fates and furies buoyed him overboard

And plumped him to the bottom of the deep.

Then, were his single witness held in doubt,

Why, by good luck, here was a passenger

Who saw the fellow fetch his frenzied leap,

And saw his watchman hold him back in vain;

He, Shimei, would not fail him at the pinch,

To swear him clear of any touch of blame.

The soldier, to this word, had little spoke,

Nothing that might import his secret thought,

Heed giving in blank silence, ominous,

Or hopeful, for his tempter, dubious which.

Now he spoke, saying: “Glibly dost thou talk,

Making the task light, laughable the risk.

Know it is perilous business, this of thine.

Yon Paul appears a prisoner of note,

Whom our centurion, for his reasons, treats

With favor” — “For his reasons, yea; well said,”

Interposed Shimei; “but such reasons fail

Promptly when the purse fails that yields them. End

Already, as I know, was reached with Paul,

When he at Sidon bought his leave to land,

Hoping a rescue.” “But,” the soldier said,

“Paul seems indeed to be a worthy man.”

“A wise head, thou,” the wily Jew replied;

“‘ Seems,’ — thou hast once more hit it in that word!

Fair-seeming truly, rotten at the core.”

“However that may be,” the guard rejoined,

“Rotten or sound the man, it were a deed,

A bold deed, deed of risk and price, to do

What thou requirest.”‘ Willing,’ Shimei thought,

‘ Willing, but greedy; bid for higher pay!

Bait him his fill, no time for higgling now.’

He said: “Bold enterprises to the bold.

Yea, there is risk; no need to make it small;

It is a soldier I am talking with.

But I will amply match the risk with wage.

Thy peril stint not thou, I not thy pay.

Here is a scrip stuffed out with yellow gold,

Test it for weight, thou earnest it all this night.”

The soldier had but meant to parley: now

This toying with temptation by the touch,

Added to his long dalliance through the ear,

Proved penetrant, seductive, so beyond

His forethought, that he stood amazed, appalled,

Listening, to feel how much he was enticed.

He might have yielded to the sorcery,

But Stephen, with an instant instinct wise,

Sudden sprang, speechless, imminent, to his feet.

The soldier at the apparition took

A fine air of indignant virtue on.

“Rascal,” said he, “I have trolled thee well along

From point to point and let thee talk and talk,

And my palm tickle with the touch of gold,

Or counterfeit of gold, thou counterfeit

Of man! Thou hast shown thyself for what thou art.

Thy proffered bribe I keep for proof of thee;

But thou, thou goest with me my prisoner.

A night in irons down in the deepest hold

May give thee waking dreams thy morrow's chance

With the centurion hardly will dispel!”

Therewith he stalked off Shimei, stunned to dumb

And dizzy, with that deafening crack of doom.

Scarce less astonished and scarce less dismayed,

Stephen stood stricken on the staggering deck;

The roaring of the unregarded wind

Less noisy than the tumult of his thoughts.

The contrast of the horror of such crime

To the sweet peace and pleasure he but now

Was tasting in the hallowing afterglow

Of those bright moments with Euníce spent;

The frightful danger overpast for Paul;

The retribution, like a thunderbolt,

Fallen on Shimei; these, with remembrance mixed

Of what the chiliarch, wiser than he knew,

Said, touching Shimei with that letter charged

Of sinister import to Cæsarea,

“He carries his own sentence thither hence” —

‘ Unwritten sentence in his bosom, yea,

He carried, and he carries, wretched man!’

Thought Stephen.‘ And what dire things in the world!

And God from heaven beholds and suffers all!

And what will be the end, if ever end,

Of all this tale of wickedness with woe

Drawn out from age to age, through clime and clime!’

Such thoughts on thoughts held Stephen hanging there

Unnoted minutes, till the dash of rain

In great drops threatening deluge smote his face

Like hailstones, and awoke him to the world.

At the same moment, Paul — who had not dreamed

Of the swift, muffled, darkling tragedy

Of plot and peril, shame and crime and doom,

Just acted nigh him in that theater,

And microcosm afloat of the wide world —

Broke up the long lull of his reverie

Above the running waters, heard, scarce seen,

Beneath him, by the hasting vessel's side —

As if a symbol of the mystery

Of things, an-hungered to devour all thought!—

And turned to shroud him from the weather wild.

The uncle and the nephew met, but spoke

Only a peace and farewell for the night;

Stephen not finding in his heart to break

To Paul the ill good news of what had passed.

With the rain falling, soon the wind was laid,

Planed was the sea, and cleansed of cloud the sky.

Bright the stars looked innumerably down

On the ship smoothly sped her prosperous way.