PAUL AND KRISHNA.

As one transported to a different sphere,

Some sinless planet fairer far than ours,

Amid new scenes and aspects there beheld,

Would watch and wonder and not understand,

So had the most of that ship's company,

Not understanding, but much wondering, watched

What passed between the wretched Shimei

And those his ministers of grace and love.

Felix, discoursing with Drusilla, said

( For he, by virtue of his being himself,

Perforced divined accordingly — amiss )

“Much painful cultivation, for no fruit!

Paul, turn and turn about, that time did seem

His enemy at advantage to have had,

And prospect was that Shimei, won to him

With all those unexpected services

( Sore needed, in such sorry case, no doubt! )

Would, could he first make shift to clear himself,

Right face about at Rome and, far from being

An adversary witness against Paul,

Swear him snow-white with turncoat testimony.

How easily king Jupiter, with that pass

Of playful lightning, brought it all to naught!”

Said Felix; then, with change abrupt from sneer,

Grim added this, in sullen afterthought:

“That lightning was a neat dispatch for him!

I wish that it had fallen on me instead.”

“Ill-omened from thy lips such words as those,”

Drusilla answered. “And what love to me

Speak they, thy wife and queen — not with her lord

Joined in thine imprecation dire of doom?

Perhaps indeed we shall be separate

In death — with death, despite the difference,

But differently horrible to both!

For I have my forebodings, bred of thine,

And dread to be somehow hereafter caught

In some form of calamity unknown

But unescapable and horrible

And final and fatal as that Shimei's.

And what if he, our son ( thine image — form,

And face, and character, and all ) dear pledge

To me of love that once his father bore

His mother, happy she as worthy judged,

Once!— what if he, our little Felix too

Be in that dread catastrophe involved!”

Drusilla thus half feigned contagious fears,

But half she felt them; for in truth she now,

So long in shadow from her husband's mood,

Was under power of gloomy imaginings.

Yet, felt or feigned her fears, she made them spells

This day to conjure with, when to her own

Image the little Felix's she joined

In desperate hope to spur her husband's spirit

Out of the slough of his despondency

And comfort him by making him comfort her.

But Felix was not fiber fine enough

To feel even, less to heed, appeal wrung out

Though from sincerest pain for sympathy;

And now his own crass egoism coarsely knew

How shallow, or how hollow, or how false,

This subtler egoism of his consort was.

Drusilla's art defeated its own end;

Felix more murkily lowered, and muttered fierce

Betwixt set teeth in husky tones and low:

“Aye, and why not thou too along with me?

Count thyself meant — thyself not less than me —

In what that memorable day was said

At Cæsarea in the judgment hall —

Said, and much more conveyed without being said —

By that Jew Paul, of dark impending doom.

If I am wicked, sure thou art wicked too;

The gods must hate us, if they hate, alike.

Let us, since hated jointly, jointly hate.

Perhaps compact and cordial partnership

Betwixt us in some hatred chosen well

Will be almost as good as mutual love!”

Drusilla to such savage cynicism

Gave loth ear bitterly, as one well sure

It were not wise in anything to cross

Her husband's brutal whim, and he went on:

“There is that milksop Sergius Paulus — he

Roman, forsooth! The Roman in his blood,

If ever Roman ran therein true red,

Has been washed white with something else infused.

I much misdoubt that Paul has brought him round

To be disciple of the Nazarene.

A pretty pair, a Roman and a Jew —

Like us, my dear Drusilla! And the Jew,

In either case, the chief one of the pair!”

With such communings entertained those two,

Adulterer and adulteress, the hours;

The passion that they once had miscalled love,

Yea, even that passion — long in either breast

With the disgust of sick satiety

Palled — now at length by guilt and guilty fears,

Brood of ambition disappointed, slain:

But in the ashes of such burned-out love

Smouldered the embers of self-fuelled hate,

Fell fire that thus on Sergius fixed its fangs!

Meanwhile that Indian Krishna, deep in muse,

Masked with impassable demeanor mild

From all about him, from himself even, masked

A trouble of wonder that he could not lay.

He gazed with gentle furtiveness at Paul

And strove to read the riddle of the man.

He felt Paul's spirit different from his own;

His own was placid with placidity

Resembling death, or trance and apathy

That would be, were it perfect, death. But Paul,

Not placid, peaceful rather, seemed to live

Not less but more intensely than the rest,

His fellow-creatures round him in the world;

A life of passion reconciled with peace!

‘ Impossible! Passion reconciled with peace!’

Thought Krishna;‘ I seek peace through passion slain,

Expecting, I the seeker, not to be

At all, the moment I a finder am.

This Hebrew has the secret now of peace;

Strange peace, not passionless, but passionate!—

Extinction not of being, here forestalled,

Like that for which I strive by ceasing striving

( With fear lest after all I miss the mark,

And only strive to cease, not cease to strive )

Nay, no nirvâna antedated, his —

That hope of our lord Buddha hard to win —

But life increased with life to such a power

As is the mighty river's grown too great

To register in eddy or ripple even

Resistance in its channel overcome.

Is life then, boundless, better than blank death?’

So Krishna mused in doubt beholding Paul,

Until at last to Sergius Paulus he,

Breaking the seals of silence, spoke and said:

“If to thy thinking meet, bring me, I pray,

To speak with Paul, so named, thy friend as seems.

But first tell me who was, and what, that Jew

To such plight of sheer wretchedness reduced

That to be rid by lightning of his life

Seemed blessing, whatsoever might ensue

Hereafter to him in his next estate,

Doubtless some sad metempsychosis due.

Was he perhaps a kinsman near of Paul?”

“Nay, kinsman none, save as all Jews are kin,

Descended from the same forefather old,”

Said Sergius. “Then perhaps of some of those,

Near kinsman,” Krishna said, “women with men,

Who watched with that long patience over him,

And won him as from death to life with love?”

“Nay, also not their kinsman,” Sergius said,

Pleasing himself with saying no more, to see

How far the silence-loving Indian drawn

By unaccustomed wonder still would seek.

“Some reverend father of his people, then,”

Krishna adventured guessing, “whom, oppressed

With undeserved calamity, they yet

Honored themselves with honoring to the end?”

“O nay, far otherwise than such, he was,”

Said Sergius, “vile, most vile by them esteemed,

And that of rich desert, a man of shame

And crime committed or fomented still.”

“Then haply — not of purpose, but by chance” —

Said Krishna, groping deeper in his dark,

“That vile man yet, if even by wickedness,

Had wrought some service to these kindly folk

Which they would not without requital pass?”

“Still from the mark,” said Sergius, “thy surmise.

That evil man no end of evil deed

Instead had plotted and led on in guile

Against these gentle people to their woe.

Last, and but late, during this selfsame voyage

Of theirs from Syria to Rome, on board

That other vessel whence they came to us,

He sought, with midnight bribe and treachery,

To compass violent death for Paul, a man,

As thou hast seen, beyond belief beloved,

And for good cause, of all. That failing, he

With perjury and well-supported fraud

Of adamantine front and impudence,

Charged upon Paul attempt to murder him.”

So Sergius Paulus, with some generous heat,

And horror of the heinous things he told.

He said no more and Krishna naught replied.

After much vexing controversy vain

With winds that varying ever blew adverse,

They had made the roadstead of The Havens Fair.

Here they dropped anchor, glad of peace and rest

And leisure to consider of their way,

Whether they still would forward stem despite

The threats of winter, or there wait for spring.

Krishna fell silent when those things he heard

From Sergius Paulus; silent Krishna fell,

But in his bosom shut deep musings up

Whereof the first he, in due season brought

To speech with Paul while they at anchor rode,

Propounded with preamble soft and suave

In words like these: “Much merit hast thou hope

Doubtless, yea, and most justly, to have earned,

Thou, and thy Hebrew fellow-voyagers,

With all that ill-deservéd kindness shown

Him, thy base countryman, whom, thunderstruck,

Fate hurried lately hence to other doom.

A millstone burden bound about the neck

Is karma such as his to weigh one down —

‘ Karma,’ we say; but otherwise perhaps

Thou speakest; merit or demerit, what

Accrues to one inseparable from himself,

In part his earning, heritage in part,

The harvest reapt of virtue or of vice —

Aye, karma such as his was weighs one down

In dying, to new life more dire than death.

Hard-won a karma like thine own, but worth

The winning though ten thousand times more hard!”

Paul felt the Indian's gentleness and loved

Him with great pity answering him: “I know

Thy meaning, and I take the courtesy,

While yet the praise I cannot, of thy words.

My karma is not mine as won by me

With either easy sleight or hard assay —

The karma thou hast seemed in me to find:

That was bestowed, and is from hour to hour

With ever fresh bestowal still renewed.

I had a karma once indeed my own,

Much valued, wage it was of labor sore,

But it grew hateful in my opened eyes

And I despised it underneath my feet

To be as dross rejected and abjured.”

Paul's sudden vehemence in recital seemed

Less vehemence from recalling of long-past

Strong spurning, than that spurning now renewed.

Unmoved the Indian save to mild surprise

Made answer: “Our lord Buddha teaches us

Our karma is inalienably ours,

The fatal fruit of what we do and are,

No more to be divided from ourselves

Than shadow from its substance in the sun.

But, nay, that figure fails; our karma is

Substantial and enduring more than we.

We die, our karma lives; it shuffles off

Us as outworn, and takes unto itself

Forever other forms to fit its needs,

Until the cycle is filled of change and change,

And misery and existence cease together.

Such karma is, the one substantial thing,

And such are we, mere shadows of a day.

Pray then explain to me how thou dost say

Thou ridst thee of a karma once thine own;

And how moreover thou canst add and say

Thou tookst another karma, given, not won.

I fain would understand the doctrine thine.”

With something of a sweet despondency

Pathetically tingeing his good will,

Paul on the gentle Indian gazed and said:

“O brother, with all wish to meet thee fair,

Yet know I that I cannot answer thee,

Save as in parable and paradox

Beyond thine understanding, yea, and mine.”

Paul so replied because his mind indeed

Sank in a sense sincere of impotence;

But partly too because he felt full well

How all-accomplished in the skill of thought,

How subtle, and how deep, the Indian was,

As how by nature and by habit fond

Of allegory and of mystery.

He deemed that he should best his end attain

Of feeding this inquiring spirit fine

With the chief truth, by frankly staggering him,

As the Lord staggered Nicodemus once,

With that which in his doctrine was the highest

And hardest to receive or understand,

Set forth in terms of shadow to perplex,

But also tempt to further curious quest.

Merging the Indian's idiom in his own

And lading it with unwonted sense, Paul said:

“That karma, erst so valued, I escaped

How? by becoming other than I was.

The old man died and a new man was born,

With a new karma given him, of pure grace,

A seamless robe of snow-white righteousness,

Enduement from the hand of One that died

To earn the right of so bestowing it.

Raiment of filthy rags with pride I had worn

Before, not knowing, painful patchwork pieced

Upon me of such works of righteousness

Mine own as cost me dear indeed, yet worth

Nothing to hide my nakedness and shame.

Now I am clad in Jesus’ righteousness,

A shining vesture, with nor seam nor stain.”

“Proud words, albeit not proudly spoken, thine,”

Said Krishna; “spotlessly enrobed art thou

In righteousness and karma without flaw,

Then thou hast reached the issue of The Way

And art already for nirvâna ripe:

Gautama could not make a bolder claim

When, conquering, he attained the Buddhaship.

Yet meekly thou madest mention of pure grace,

And merit all another's, not thine own.

A paradox indeed, perplexing me,

Such boldness mixed with such humility.”

“Yea,” Paul said, “the humility it is

That makes the boldness thou hast found in me;

It were defect of right humility

Not boldly to obey when Christ bids do.

Christ bids me take His perfect righteousness;

I can be humble but by taking it —

Boldly? yea, or as if boldly, for here

Humility and boldness twain are one.”

“To thee thy teacher Christ,” said Krishna, “seems

Something the same as Buddha is to me:

Yet other, more; not teacher simply, Christ

To thee, and master, setter forth of wise

Instructions and commands obeying which

Thou also now, as he once saved himself,

Mayst thyself save through merit hardly earned.

Thy Christ is will, not less than wisdom; power

And help, as well as guidance in the way.

Sovereign creator and imparter, he

Saves thee, thou trustest, through new life bestowed,

Which makes thee other than thou wast before,

And therefore frees thee from the fatal yoke

And bondage of the karma thou hadst won

With labor when thou wast the former man:

The words are easy, but the sense is hard.”

“Hard?” Paul said; “nay, outright impossible

To any soul of man that still abides

His old first natural self unchanged to new.

Submit thyself unto the righteousness

Of God, and thou the mystery shalt know

With knowledge deeper than the mind's most deep

Divinings of the things she cannot speak.”

“To fate, the universe, and necessity,”

Said Krishna, “I submit, because I must.

But to submit because I will, to any thing,

Much more to any one, that is, give up

My will, which is my self, my very self,

To be another's and no longer mine,

Consent to be another person quite

Than I have been, and am, and wish to be —

This thou proposest to me, if I take

Rightly thy words to mean thou thus hast done,

Becoming what thou art by vital change

From something different that thou wast before.

I frankly tell thee I have not the power

So to commute myself, had I the will.”

“‘ I cannot’ is‘ I will not’ here,” said Paul;

“No power is needful of thine own save will:

Will, and thou canst; God then in thee is power.

Consider, it is only to submit.”

“I feel my inmost will in me disdain,”

Said Krishna, “this effacement of myself.”

“Yea, yea,” said Paul, “it is the carnal mind

In thee, the primal unregenerate self

Ever in all at enmity with God,

Which is not subject to the law of God,

Neither indeed can be; to be, were death

To that old self which must resist, to live:

The carnal mind is enmity to God;

When enmity to God ceases in one,

Then ceases in that one the carnal mind,

The original man with his self-righteousness

His karma, if thou please, his good, his ill.

He is no more, and all that appertains

To him is dead and buried out of sight

Forever; but there lives a second self

By resurrection from that sepulcher —

By fresh creation rather from the dead —

A new regenerate man at one with God,

For to the law of God agreed in will,

Replaced the carnal with the spiritual mind,

Warfare and death exchanged for life and peace.”

Into Paul's voice, he ceasing with those words,

There slid a cadence as of reverie:

He seemed to muse so deeply what he said

That he less said than felt it;‘ life’ and‘ peace,’

So spoken, no mere sounds upon the tongue,

Were audible pulses of the living heart.

Invasion thence of power seized Krishna's soul,

And,‘ Life and peace!’ he murmured,‘ Life and peace!’

But said aloud: “Strange union, peace with life!

We look for peace only with death, last death,

That death indeed beyond which nothing is,

No further transmigration of the soul,

No soul, no karma, all pure passionless

Non-being; not a state, since state implies

Some subject of a state, and here is none,

To do or suffer or at all to be:

Absolute zero, such the Buddhist's peace.”

“‘ I am come,’ Jesus said,” so Paul replied,

“‘ That ye might have life, more abundant life.’

Life, life, deep stream and full, a river of God,

Pours endless, boundless, from the heart of Christ;

‘ Ho, every one that thirsteth, drink,’ said He,

‘ Lo, drink and live with mine eternal life.’”

“I fear fallacious promises of good,”

Sighed Krishna; “life were good indeed with peace.

But me, I hope not any good save flight,

Save flight and refuge inaccessible

From persecuting and pursuing ill.

Being is misery; I would cease to be;

No hope have I, and no desire, but that.

Hope is for children; I am not a child

To chase the ends of rainbows, seeking gold:

There is no hope that does not make ashamed.

I dare not hope, eagerly, even for death,

Lest that likewise elude my clutch at last.

Despair no less I shun; despair is naught

But hope turned bitter and sour, postponed too long.

I only seek to cease from hope, from fear,

From every passion that can shake my calm.

Calm is my good, and perfect calm is death,

Therefore I wait for death with death-like calm.

Thou wouldst disturb the calm with hope of life,

Fair, but fallacious; let me alone to die.”

With soft pathetic deprecation so

Krishna, in form of words, half faltering, begged

From Paul no more, yet added: “I would hear

Something of what he was, thy master; what

He did as well as taught; and whence he came,

And when, and where, and how; and how he lived

And died, having achieved his Buddhaship.”

“For me,” Paul said, “I never truly knew

My Master while He lived among us here,

Almighty God incarnate in the form

Of servant — glory and blessing to His name!—

Though after He in triumph from the dead

Rose, and ascended far above all height

Into the heaven of heavens to be with God —

Whence he had stooped the dreadful distance down

To His humiliation among men —

Then He revealed Himself in power to me,

And I beheld His face and heard His voice,

And knew Him for co-equal Son of God.

But thou, besides that in this power and glory

No man may see Him save He show Himself,

Wouldst wish a picture of the life He lived,

The manner of man He was, while still on earth,

The death He died, and how He died His death.

There is one here among us well can draw

The living picture thou wouldst look upon,

For she was with Him when He walked the ways

Of Galilee and Jewry doing good;

She saw Him suffer when by wicked hands

His blindfold yet more wicked countrymen —

Alas, among them I!— put Him to death.

With early morning at His sepulcher,

His emptied sepulcher, she weeping stood

And saw — but what she saw and all her tale

Of Jesus as she knew and loved Him here,

Is Mary Magdalené's right herself

With her own lips and is her joy, to tell.”

“Lord Buddha would not let a woman teach,”

Indulging so much of recoil concealed

As might consist with utmost courtesy

Said Krishna; but, with wise avoidance, Paul:

“And Mary Magdalené will not teach,

But only in simplicity with truth

Bear testimony of eye-witness how

Immanuel Jesus lived His life on earth.”

While thus they talked a movement on the deck,

Words of command and bustle to obey,

Betokened that the purpose was to leave

The sheltered anchorage of The Havens Fair

And tempt the dangers of the winter deep.

Paul saw it and suddenly broke off discourse

With Krishna, saying to him: “They err in this;

Surely we here should winter. Let me speak

A moment with the master of the ship.”

Krishna with such surprise as disapproved

Dimly in his immobile features shown,

Watched while this intermeddling strange went on;

Strange intermeddling ventured, strangely borne,

Captive to captor bringing advice unsought;

For Paul to the centurion also turned

When now the master and the owner both

Agreed against him; but that Roman chose

Likewise his part with them to sail away.