RE-EMBARKED.
Arrived at Myra on their way toward Rome, Paul and his companions are transferred to a different vessel to pursue their voyage. The new vessel is from Alexandria: it brings thence as passengers for Rome two mutual friends, one of them a Roman, the other a Buddhist from India named Krishna. Rachel, having seen Paul and the Roman greet each other as old acquaintances, soon inquires apart of Paul who the Roman is, and, learning is thence drawn on into exchange of reminiscence and reflection with her brother. The two at length unite in interceding with Julius on behalf of Shimei. They secure for him the freedom of the deck.
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.