RE-EMBARKED.

Where on the towering shore a mighty gorge

Breaks headlong through the mountains to the sea,

And a deep stream into a haven large

Spreads for the welcome of all ships that sail

The Mediterranean ocean, there of old

Myra, metropolis of Lycia, sat;

Mart once of many meeting nations — now

A few colossal shadows sign and say

Mutely,‘ Here Myra was, and she was great!’

At Myra safe arrived and anchor cast,

That Adramyttian vessel disembarked

Her voyagers bound to Rome, and went her way.

When she at Cæsarea touching found

That Jewish prisoner there and bore him thence,

She had suddenly gone sailing unaware,

In transit as of star athwart the sun,

Into the solar light of history;

At Myra parting with him she passed on

Into the rim of dark and disappeared:

A moment in a light she guessed not of

Illuminated for all time to see,

Then heedless dipping deep her plunging keel

And foundering in the gulfs of the unknown!

A bark of Egypt seeking Italy,

Wheat-laden of the fatness of the Nile,

Swung resting in the Myra roadstead nigh.

Hereon were re-embarked that company,

Paul, and the friends that sailed with Paul to Rome —

Fallen Felix too, with his wife spurring him

To hope yet and to strive and still be strong.

Alexandreia sent the vessel forth,

City twice famous, joining to her own

The august tradition of her founder's fame,

The mighty Macedonian's mightier son,

Great Alexander who the whole world gained

Indeed — with what for profit of it all?

At this sea-gate wide opening to the West,

From all the East men met and hence dispersed —

That current laden most which drew to Rome.

Besides from Egypt her hierophants,

Hence thither flocked those worshippers of fire

From Persia holding Zoroaster sage,

Astrologers of Assyria, and from Ind

Confessors of the somber faith of Buddh.

Of many such as these on board that bark

One Indian Buddhist votary there was

Worthy of note: a gentle-mannered man

Deep in himself involved, as who mused much

Of hidden things and hard to understand,

The pathos of the mystery of the world,

The human strife, with the defeat foregone

Companioning the strife and ending it —

Yet ending not a strife that could not end,

But ever, round and round, one dull defeat,

Trod the treadmill of fate, no hope, no goal.

A gentle-mannered man, but sad of cheer,

Krishna his name, pilgrim of many climes,

Not idly curious to behold and learn,

But hiding pity in his heart for men

Seen everywhere the same, poor blinded moles

Toiling and moiling in the sunless mines

Of being, where no joy, whence no escape.

Escape none, or, if any, then escape

Impossible to win except by slow,

And unimaginably slow, process

Of suicide to endless date prolonged,

Æons on æons following numberless,

And fatal transmigrations of the soul

From state to state, from form to form, of self:

Yet progress none that might be felt the while,

But one long-drawn monotony instead

Of labor waste in movement seeming vain,

Cycles of change returning on themselves

Forever, bound to orbits that revolve

Eternal repetitions of the same

Vicissitude ( the weaver's shuttle flung

Tediously back and forth from hand to hand —

Or swinging pendulum ),‘ twixt death and birth,

Lapses from misery to misery

Always, prospect like retrospect stretched out

To vista and perspective vanishing

Of path to be pursued and still pursued

By the undaunted seeker of an end —

He by his own act dying all the time

In ceaseless effort utterly to cease,

Will willing not to will, desire desiring

To be desire no more, pure apathy,

No hope, no fear, no motion of the mind,

Until, through dull disuse and atrophy,

Extinguished be capacity itself

To do or suffer anything, and so,

Down sinking through the bottomless abyss

Of being, at last the fugitive go free,

Emancipate but by becoming — naught!

Krishna thus deeming of his fellow-men,

Their present and their future and their fate,

Hid a vast pity in his heart for them,

Pity the vaster that he could not help.

This melancholy man compassionate,

Who might in musing to himself seem lost,

Yet saw and heard with vigilant quick sense

Whatever passed about him where he stood,

Or where he sat — for most he moveless sat,

Moveless and silent, on the swarming deck.

One man indeed he spake with, yet with him

His speech, grave ever, he spared, and sheathed in tones

Soothingly soft and low like blandishment.

That one man was a Roman; Roman less

To seeming than cosmopolite — his air

An air of long-accustomed conversance

With whatsoever might be seen and learned

Through much Ulyssean wandering to and fro

And up and down among his fellow-men,

And watching of their works and words and ways.

This Roman citizen of the world, mailed proof

In habit of a full-experienced mind

Against commotion from surprise, was now

Visibly moved to wonder seeing Paul.

His wonder checked with reverence and with love

Indignant to behold the captive state

Of one deserving rather wreath than bond,

He stepped toward Paul and with such homage paid

As liege to lord might pay saluted him.

“Grace unto thee, my brother,” answered Paul,

“From the Lord Jesus Christ, thy Lord and mine!”

They twain fell on each other's neck and kissed

With tears. Such salutation and embrace —

No more; but this with variant mood was marked

By three that saw it. The centurion

Blent in his look pleasure with his surprise;

But Felix and Drusilla frowned askance

( They also knowing the Roman, as at court

Courtiers know one another — without love );

Those frowned askance, and mixed their mutual eyes

In sinister exchange of look malign

Portending sequel if the chance should serve;

And in Neronian Rome the happy chance

Of mischief, but be patient, scarce could fail!

That gentle Indian with his pregnant eye

Saw all and mused it — then, and after, long —

The cheerful, joyful, reverent greeting given

A Jewish prisoner by a Roman lord

And by the Jewish prisoner so returned

In unaccustomed words ill understood

But solemn like the language of a spell;

This, with the Roman captain's look benign

Approving what surprised him yet; nor less,

The menace of the mutual scowls that met

Darkening each other on the alien brows

Of Felix and Drusilla at the sight —

Most like two clouds that, black already, blown

Together, shadow into a deeper dark!

In due time, anchor weighed with choral sound

Of sailors’ voices cheering each himself

And each his fellow in a formless tune,

The ship from out the haven slowly slid,

Urged with the oar but wooing too the wind

With slack sail doubtful drooping by the mast.

Large planes of lucid ocean tranced in calm

They traversed with loth labor of the oar,

Or else were buffeted of winds that blew

Thwart or full opposite day after day,

While they hugged close the Asian shore, then Rhodes

Saw southward, mooring fair her fruitful isle.

The leisures long-drawn-out of those delays,

To Paul and to his friends were prize and spoil.

Grown wonted to the sway of wind and wave,

They spent, cradled at grateful ease, the slow,

Soft-lapsing, indistinguishable hours

That wore the sunny summer season out,

In various converse or communion sweet

Oft with mere sense of mutual nearness nursed.

“Who was that kindly courteous gentleman,”

Thus at fit moment Rachel asked of Paul,

“That spoke so fair my brother coming up?

Roman he seemed, and lordly was his air;

Yet something other, sweeter, differenced him

From his compatriot peers, and I observed

Thou gavest him thy grace from Christ the Lord.”

“That, Rachel,” Paul replied, “was one I knew —

Almost mightst thou have known him — long ago

In Tarsus; we were boys together there.

But since then twice, with now this added time,

Has God in wisdom made our pathways meet.

That Roman to Damascus went with me

And saw, what time the glory of the Lord

Blinded me to behold at last the True.

But him that glory, seen not suffered, left

For outward vision what he was before,

While inwardly with denser darkness blind,

Reclaimed from atheism to idolatry!

But God had mercy on him; years went by,

And I, with Barnabas to Cyprus come,

Found there this selfsame Roman, governor.

The skeptic whom theophany had made

Religious not, but superstitious, now

Led captive of delusion — worldly-wise

Albeit he was, yet unto God a fool!—

Was given up wholly dupe and devotee

Of a deceiver, Jew, Bar-jesus named,

Pretender to the gift of prophecy.

This sorcerer dared withstand us to the face

Before the governor, who had summoned us

( Not dreaming whom he summoned summoning me )

To tell him of the word of God. But I,

Filled with the Spirit of the Lord — mine eyes

On him, that sorcerer, fastened — uttered words

Which God the Faithful followed with such blast

And blight of blindness on the wretched man

That he groped seeking who would lead him thence.

The governor beheld and wonder-struck

To see God's work God's word at last believed.

The pagan playmate of my boyhood so

Became the changed soul thou hast seen him here,

In Jesus brother, loving and beloved;

And Sergius Paulus thou his name mayst call.”

“O Saul,” said Rachel, “in what history

Of marvel following marvel has thy life,

Since when that noon Christ met thee in thy way

Damascus-ward, been portioned out to thee!

The stories of the prophets old whom God

Wrought through to show His people how behind

The thick veil of His outward handiwork

He Himself lived and was a present God —

Those tales of wonders, let me own it, Saul,

Had grown to me to seem so far away

From our time, and so alien from the things

We with our eyes behold, hear with our ears,

Much more, with these our hands perform, that I

Almost had fallen, not into disbelief

( Not that, ever, I trust — nay, God forbid! )

Concerning them, but into a listless mind

Which to itself no image of them framed —

Fault well-nigh worse than outright disbelief!

That now the things themselves, nay, things more strange,

Should be by God repeated in the world,

Nor only so, that one of mine own blood,

My brother, should a chosen vessel be

Of this great grace of God through Christ to men —

This less with wonder than with awe fills me,

And I — believe not, faith were name too faint

For passion such as mine is — I adore!”

Paul bent on Rachel eyes unutterable

Wherein a sense of sympathy serene

Betwixt himself and her he talked with, shone,

And they twain dwelt in a suspense supreme,

Silent, of adoration where they stood —

The rapture of doxology unbreathed

To either doubled as by other shared.

At length Paul spoke; his tones intense and low

Thrilled through the ear of Rachel to her heart:

“O Rachel, He who out of darkness once

Bade the light shine, God, shined into our hearts

Enkindling there this dayspring from on high,

This light of knowing from the face of Christ

The glory inexpressible of God!”

A pause once more of rapt communion; then

This added in a chastened other strain:

“But we such treasure have in urns of clay

Fragile and nothing worth that all in all

The exceeding greatness of the power may be

Not of ourselves but ever only God's!

Constrained I find myself in every way,

But straitened not; perplexed, but not dismayed;

Hunted, but not forsaken; smitten down,

But not destroyed; forever bearing round

Within the body wheresoever driven

The dying of the Lord, that the Lord's life

May also in my body forth be shown.

Therefore I faint not; let my outward man

Fail, if it must, my inward man meantime

Is day by day in fadeless youth renewed.

How light affliction sits upon my heart!

It is but for a moment, and it works

The while for me an ever-growing weight

Of glory fixed forever to be mine!

I look no longer on the things about

Me, seeming to be real, since they are seen,

But far away instead, far, far away

Beyond these, at the things that are not seen.

These for a season, Rachel, the things seen!

But those, the things not seen, eternal they!

“When I saw Stephen upward into heaven

Gaze, and behold there what no eye might see,

The glory of the Ever-living God,

And Jesus standing by His Father's side;

When afterward I saw Hirani stand

Before the anger of the Sanhedrim,

His eyes not seeing what their faces looked,

His ears not hearing what the voices round

Were saying and forswearing to his harm,

But steadfastly his vision fixed afar

And all his hearkening bent for sounds unheard,

Sights, sounds, sent couriers from the world to come,

The real world, the eternal, and the blest —

How little knew I then what now I know!

O Rachel, why was I not then disturbed

With doubts and fears, and guesses of the true?

The darkness of that hour before the dawn!

The brightness of this full-accomplished day!

The glory of that other day that waits!

The Jacob's ladder and the shining rounds!

The moving pomps of angels up and down

Ascending and descending the degrees

Betwixt the heights of heavenly and my feet!

“Now unto Him that in such darkness died,

But rose amid such brightness from the tomb

And reascended where He was before

To glory inaccessible with God,

And there expects until He thither bring

Us also both to witness and to share

His exaltation to the almighty throne —

To our Lord Christ, Redeemer by His blood,

Worthy, and only worthy, to receive

Ascription without measure of men's praise,

Be honor, worship, thanks, obedience, paid,

And love, even love like His, forevermore!”

Rachel had barely to her brother's words

Breathed fervently her low amen, when he,

The passion of doxology unspent

Yet quivering in his tones, went on and said:

“But, Rachel, all amid this strain of joy

Exulting like a fountain in my heart —

Unspeakable and full of glory indeed,

As Peter matched it with his mighty phrase!—

Yea, in it, as if of it and the same,

I feel a sense of pathos and of pain

And hint of earthly with the heavenly mixed.

I cannot but of Shimei think, and grieve —

The grief indeed a paradox of joy,

Such pity and such anguish of desire

To help and save! Can we not succor him?

Can we not have him forth of his duress

In dungeon into this fair light of day?

I feel it must be possible. Pray thou,

And I will pray, and haply God may touch

The heart of Julius to such act of grace

That at our suit and intercession he

Will bid the wretched bondman up again

Out of the noisome darkness where he pines,

If to full freedom not, at least to breathe

The freshness of the unpolluted air

And feel the force of the reviving sun.

Sick he may be, in prison is, we know,

And neighbor let us count him, taught of Christ

To hold for neighbor any who in need

Is nigh enough to us for us to help.

Sick and in prison Jesus we might find

In Shimei, if for Jesus’ sake we go

And carry him the solaces of love!”

“But he, will he receive what we should bring?”

Said Rachel; “would not bitter-making thought

Welling up in him like a secret spring

Of brackish issue gushing from beneath

A crystal runlet pure as Siloa's brook,

Turn for him all our sweetness into gall?”

“Perhaps, perhaps,” said Paul; “we cannot know.

That were for thee and me defeat indeed —

To be of evil overcome! But, nay,

Nay, Rachel, let us hope, and overcome

Evil with good. What is impossible?

Is this, even this, impossible — through Christ?

Love, if love perfect be, hopeth all things.

There is in love, as John delights to say,

No fear; for perfect love casteth out fear.

Perfect our love, be faithless outcast fear

No counsellor of ours; but hope instead

Far-seeing, with her forward-looking eyes

Reflecting hither light from that beyond.

Hope maketh not ashamed, because the love

Of God is poured forth in our hearts a stream,

An overflowing, like the river of God,

Fed from the fulness of the Holy Ghost!

O, how omnipotent I feel in him!

But, behold, Julius! Let me speak straightway!”

“O thou, my keeper” — so to Julius Paul —

“Full courteous to thy prisoner often proved,

Nay, more than courteous, kind — beseech thee now

Beyond thy wont be courteously kind!”

“What wilt thou, then?” said Julius. “Grant it me,”

Paul answered, “to reprieve, from chains, I ask not,

But from his dungeon doom, to see the sun

And breathe this vital air, the wretched man

Whom, partly for my sake perhaps, thou keepest

Immured in dismal dark duress below!”

“Strange being thou!” said Julius answering Paul,

Yet answering not, with wonder overpowered.

“That wretch, that miscreant, craven, liar, proved

Corrupter of the faith of men through bribe —

Nay, but assassin, only that he failed,

Assassin disappointed in attempt —

On whose life but thine own?— such man accurst

Do I now hear thee interceding for,

Thee, prisoner thyself, and that — unless

The story of his plot and traitorhood

And band of forty sworn conspirators

Against thee at Jerusalem, have been

Falsely told me — aye, that solely through him!

I wonder at thee! Art thou mad? The day

Thy countryman confronted by thee quailed,

Convicted of his dastard perjury

Which aimed to make thee murderer of him —

Then, Paul, I thought thee sane enough, as thou

With words launched like the thunderbolts of Jove

Didst rive him to his rotten innermost!

Yet then, even then, relenting strangely, thou

Didst melt the hardness that became thee so —

Making thee almost Roman, as I thought —

Melt it into a softness like a woman's.

And now again from thee this wanton whim

And suit of pity for that damnable!

I cannot make thee out — unless it be

Thou art moonstruck, and maudlin-mindedness

At times seize thee betraying thy manhood thus!”

Paul did not answer the centurion's words

With words again; instead — with look serene,

Ascendant, irresistible — received,

Absorbed, and overbore that other's look

( Which, after the words spoken, rested on

Paul's face in pity that was almost scorn )

Quenching it as a shield a fiery dart;

Till Julius, fain to yield yet somewhat save

His pride in yielding, turned from Paul and said

To Rachel, as in condescension dashed

With banter: “Let thy sister if she will

Go carry Shimei tidings of reprieve;

A sister to a brother's murderer go

And take him token of her love — and his!”

A little softening, as he spoke, from sneer,

At the sheer aspect of her loveliness,

An aspect not of weakness, but wherein

There mingled, with the lovely woman's charm,

Something august of saintly matronhood,

Remote from any hint of what could seem

Defect of sane and saving self-control —

Thus wrought upon a little while he spoke,

Julius to Rachel turning spoke such words.

“All thanks,” she gently said, “thou art most kind.

It shall be as thou sayest, for I will go.”

She turned, but hung in action, as through doubt;

With artless art of hesitation sweet

Beyond persuasion eloquent, she said:

“Yea, thou art good, and gladly will I go,

But I — I am a woman — were it meet?—

If thou declarest it meet, then it shall be,

And thither will I venture down alone;

For God will round me globe an angel guard

To treasure me from peril and from soil.”

Her grace, but more her graciousness, prevailed;

For won upon by her demeanor meek,

Majestic, and that awe of womanhood

Instinctive in a noble breast of man,

The Roman, with even a flush of shame at last

Not altogether hidden as he turned

His bronzéd cheek away, spoke out aloud:

“Varenus!” so he called the soldier's name

Whose turn it was that watch to sentry Paul —

The same that Shimei late had sought to bribe —

“Go bid up Shimei hither from the hold!”

Haggard, dejected, squalid from the filth

And fetor of his dungeon, in surprise

With terror, doubting what awaited him —

Dazed in the sudden light his blinking eyes —

The more bewildered that he could not frame

With any true and steady sight to see

Color, or shape, of person or of thing

Before him or about him anywhere,

Shimei stepped halt and staggering on the deck.

A spectacle for pity to abhor,

And for abhorrence shuddering to behold

With pity — wreck and remnant of a man!

The soldier would not touch to steady him,

But let him shuffle as he might his way.

Scarce more than one or two uncertain steps,

And Shimei insecure of standing stood,

Shaken in all the fabric of the man —

Like some decrepit crazy edifice

Wind-shaken trembling on the point to fall.

Paul saw, and felt his heart within him moved.

To the unmoved centurion thus he spoke:

“Wilt thou not let him rest awhile retired

Apart a little till his force revive

And his eyes grow rewonted to the light?”

“Have thou thy will with him,” the Roman said,

“So far as of his chains to ease him not.

Thou art right perhaps; a little added strength

Were well, were timely, in his present plight —

May save him over to added punishment.

So nurse him fair, ye brotherhood,” said he,

“And sisterhood, of mercy ill-bestowed!”

And round the Roman glanced, with Roman scorn

Masking some sense of admiration shamed,

Upon the group of ready hearts and hands,

The circle of Paul's fellowship in faith,

Now gathered nigh with looks of wish to help.