Читать книгу The Epic of Paul - William Cleaver Wilkinson - Страница 7

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.