The Epic of Saul

by William Cleaver Wilkinson

SAUL AND SERGIUS.

Not yet his fill of slaughter supped, though forth
Afar the timorous flock of Jesus now
Were from before his restless, ravening, fierce,
Rapacious sword out of Judæa fled
To alien lands remote, beyond the heights
Of Hermon with their everlasting snows,
And farther to the islands of the sea—
Not yet, even so, his fill of slaughter supped,
Saul had from the high-priest commission sought
To search among the Hebrew synagogues
Of Syrian Damascus, and thence bring
Bound to Jerusalem whomever found,
Woman or man, confessing Jesus Christ.

The season was fresh flowering spring; the earth
Was glad with universal green to greet
The sun once more, returned in his blue heaven
After his winter's sojourn in the south.
How blithe the welcome of the morning was,
Forth looking from his east across the Hills
Of Moab on the just awakening world!
Saul met it with a sense as if of spring
And morning linking hand in hand for dance
Together in the courses of his blood,
As, mounted on a palfrey fresh and fleet,
With servitors attendant following him,
He issued jocund from Damascus gate.
The animal spirits of youth and health in him,
The joy of new adventure, the fine pulse
Of life felt in the buoyant, bounding step
With which his steed advanced him on the road,
The secret pleasure of release at last,
Release and long secure removal, won,
Through growing leagues of distance interposed,
From the abhorred access of Shimei—
These, with the season and the hour so bright,
Brightened the darkling heart of Saul to cheer.
He was a radiant aspect, fair to see,
Fronting his future with that sanguine smile!

The acclivity surmounted of a hill,
Whence downward dipped his road, declining north,
And farewell glimpse gave of Jerusalem,
Saul rein drew on his foamy-flankéd steed,
And, about winding him, paused, looking back.
His retinue, far otherwise than he
Mounted, part even on foot, with sumpter beasts
Bearing camp equipage, behind were fallen.
These, presently come up, he lets pass on
Before him in the way, while still at gaze,
There on the back of his indignant steed
Resentful to be curbed in mid-career—
Companion hoofs heard leaving him behind—
Saul sits, perusing, with an inner eye,
Yet more than with his outer, what he sees.
Half-shadow and half-light, Jerusalem
He sees, smitten athwart her level roofs
With sunshine from the horizontal sun,
The temple of Jehovah in the midst,
As if itself a sun, so dazzling bright
With its refulgence of reflected beams;
While, round about, the warder mountains stand,
Bathing their sacred brows in sacred light.
Saul's heart distends immense with patriot's joy,
Yet joy pierced through and through with patriot's pain.

"O beautiful for situation, thou,
Jerusalem!" he fervently bursts forth.
"Peace be within thy walls, prosperity
Within thy palaces! Yea, yet again,
Now for my brethren and companions' sakes,
Say I, 'Within thee, peace!' Lo, my vow hear:
For that the temple of the Lord my God
Is in thee, I henceforth thy good will seek.
And Thou, Jehovah in the heavens! behold,
Saul for himself that ancient promise claims:
'Prosper shall he Jerusalem who loves.'
For love not I Jerusalem, with love
To anguish, for her anguish and her tears?
Take pleasure in her stones, favor her dust,
O God, my God! Is not the set time come?
Do I not hear Thee say: 'Awake, awake,
Put on thy strength, O Zion, long forlorn,
And beautiful thy garments put thou on,
Jerusalem! Henceforth no more shall come
The uncircumcised into thee, nor the unclean!'"

"Amen!" Saul added, with a gush of tears,
The light mercurial feeling in his heart
Less to sad sinking, weighted down, than all,
With fluent lapse, to pleasing pathos changed.
Into that strain, so ardent and so true,
Of patriot prayer, deeply had braided been,
Half to himself unknown, a silent strand
Of subtle self-regard, vague personal hope
That would have spurned to be imprisoned in words:
'The new Jerusalem that was to be,
Should she not Saul her chief deliverer hail!'

Musing, and praying, and beholding, so,
Saul suddenly a sound of clanging hoofs
Heard, and, his eyes quick thither turning, saw,
Between hill Scopus, on whose top he stood,
And the Damascus gate through which he came,
Advancing toward him on the Roman road—
Cemented solid with its rutted stones,
Like an original stratum of the sphere—
A turm of horse, large not, but formidable,
Caparison and armor gleaming bright,
And with a nameless air forerunning them
Of wide-renownéd might invincible
Expressed in that momentous rhythmic tread
Four-footed, underneath which from afar
With pulse on pulse now rock to iron rang.
The cavalcade, by slow degrees more slow,
Moved up the acclivity till, reached the brow,
Sank to a walk their pace, when Saul perceived
An arméd escort was convoying one
Thereby betokened an ambassador,
Somewhither posting on affair of state,
Or haply citizen of high degree
Honored with ceremonious retinue.

This man regarded Saul with curious look
Respectful, which almost admiring grew;
And gravely, as their mutual glances met,
The youthful Roman to the youthful Jew
Inclined in distant salutation meant
For natural courtesy due from peer to peer.
Saul, in like wise, his greeting gave him back;
Whereon the Roman, reining to one side
His horse, and halting, said: "Peace, but methinks
I saw thee late, months since it may have been,
Where that fanatic Stephen suffered death
With stoning at your angry elders' hands."
"I, in that act of punishment," said Saul,
"As loyal Jew befitted, took my part."
"Nay, but as now I read thy features nigh,"
Sudden more earnest grown, the Roman said,
"Labors my brain with yet a different thought.
Somewhere we twain must earlier still have met.
In Tarsus I some boyish seasons spent;
I there, by chance full well-remembered, knew
A Hebrew-Roman boy whose name was Saul."
"Then Sergius Paulus is thy name," said Saul,
"And Saul am I—and Saul to Sergius, peace!"
Who but as man and man just now had met
Greeted again in sense of comradeship.

"Thy face is toward Jerusalem," to Saul
Said Sergius; "but thy look is less of one
Arriving, journey finished, than of one
Forth setting on adventure planned abroad."
"I journey to Damascus," Saul replied:
"And thither also I," said Sergius.
Damascus-ward turned Saul his horse's head,
And slowly, with the Roman, now resumed
His onward way, while further Sergius said:
"Having a brief apprenticeship at arms
Accomplished, to Jerusalem I came,
Centurion still, urged by desire to see
Thy capital city, famed throughout the world.
Since witnessing—by lucky hap it fell
My military duty to be there—
Since witnessing that spectacle so strange
Of Stephen's stoning—strange to Roman eyes,
Yet to eyes Jewish doubtless quite as strange
Our Roman fashion, hanging on the cross—
All various ways of various tribes of men
From clime to clime, delights me to observe—
What comedy to the gods must we present!—
Since I saw Stephen slain with stones, I say,
Good fortune, and some interest made for me
At Rome, have given me this my welcome chance
To travel and more widely see the world.
Now to Damascus I as legate go."
"And of our Sanhedrim as legate, I,"
Said Saul, "if so without offence I may
From Jewish mode to Gentile dare my speech
Conform—legate, or hand executive,
Say rather, in some certain offices
Deemed needful, to consult my nation's weal."

With mutual question asked and answered, vein
Of old-time boyish reminiscence shared
Between them as together on they rode—
Their horses pricking each the other's speed—
The two soon overtook their retinues,
Who, seeing their chiefs adjoined in comradeship,
Themselves in comradeship dissolved their sense
Of race and race to mix as men and men.

So all day long together, side by side,
Riding, or resting in the noontide shade,
Sergius and Saul, a frank companionship,
Immixed their minds in speech of many things.
Young life, young health, glad sense of fair emprise,
High-hearted hope of boundless futures theirs,
Delicious weather and blithe season bland,
Blue cloudless heaven forever overhead—
By the sole sun usurped his tabernacle
Whence sovran virtue beaming into all—
Sweet voice of singing-bird, sweet smile of flower,
Sweet breath exhaled from tender-fruited vine,
Joy, a full feast, through every flooded sense—
And, heightening all, that billowy onward sway
Of motion without effort on their steeds,
Made, to those lord possessors of the world,
Their talking like the coursing of their blood,
Self-moved, or like the running of a brook
That laughs and sparkles on its downward way,
As ceasing never from its hope to drain
The fountain, brimming ever, whence it flows.

Of arms, of art, and of philosophy,
They spoke, and letters; spoke, too, of the fame
Of ancient Grecian masters of the mind,
Who ruled, and rule, by charm of prose or verse.
First, Homer, hoar with immemorial eld,
Pouring his epics in that profluent stream
Which, like his ocean, wandered round the world;
Bold Pindar, with his lyric ecstasies,
On throbbing wings of exultation borne
Into the empyrean, whence his song
Broken descends in showers of melody;
Father of history, Herodotus,
"Half poet, epic, or idyllic, he"—
So, Saul thereto assenting, Sergius said—
"With his Ionic strain mellifluous
Of wonder-loving artless narrative";
Thucydides, the soul of energy;
Æschylus, Titan; happy Sophocles;
With soft Euripides unfortunate;
Then Socrates, "Who wrote no books," said Saul,
"Or wrote most living books in living men;
Plato, the chiefest book of Socrates,
Yet mind so large and so original
That, in him reading what his teacher taught,
One knows not whether Socrates it be,
Or Socrates's pupil, that one reads"—
"Knows not, and, for delight, cares not to know,
Full-sated with the feast of such discourse,
So wealthy, wise, urbane, harmonious!"—
Stung to enthusiasm, thus Sergius,
Continuing what from Saul ceased incomplete.
"Our Tully," added he, "from Plato's well
Deepest his draughts drank of philosophy,
And, thence inspired, wrote such sweet dialogue,
Latin half seemed delectable as Greek."
"Yea, and a man of fine civility
In manners as in mind, your Tully was,"
Said Saul; "Cilicia keeps his memory green
For virtues long in Roman rulers rare.
His too a sounding, stately eloquence,
And copious; but Greek Demosthenes
Pleases me better, with that stormy stress
Of passion in him, reason on fire with love
Or hatred, that indignant vehemence
Which overwhelms us like a torrent flood,
Or, like a torrent flood, upon its breast
Lifts us, and tosses us, and bears us on!
He is more like our Hebrew prophets rapt
Above themselves in sympathy with God."

In talk like this the livelong day was spent;
Hardly the talkers heeding when they passed
Meadows of flowers pied rich in colors gay,
Poppy, anemone, convolvulus,
Bright marigold wide yellowing belts of green
Into a vivid gold that dazed the eye;
And heeding hardly if upsprang the lark
From almost underneath their horses' hoofs,
Startled to leave her humble hiding nest,
And, soaring, better hide her otherwise
Amid the blinding lightnings of the sun;
Such sights and sounds and glancing motions swift
Scarce heeded—yet, as subtle influence,
Admitted, each, to infuse insensibly
Into their mood an added joyousness—
The afternoon declined into the eve.
Passed now a fountain on the wayside cliff,
Coyly, through ferny leafage, shedding down
Its weeping waters shown in fresher green,
Up a long glen they mounted to a crest
Of hill where opened a soft grassy plain—
Inviting, should one wish his tent to spread—
And here they twain their double camp bid pitch.

Supper soon ended, Saul and Sergius,
Ere sleep they seek, a hill, not far, ascend,
The highest neighboring seen, less thence to view
The landscape round them in the deepening dark
Glooming, or even the heavens above their heads
Brightening each moment in the deepening dark,
Than youth's unused excess of strength to ease
With exercise, and to achieve the highest.
But there the splendors of the firmament,
Enlarged so lustrous through that Syrian sky,
Hailed such a storm of vertical starlight
Downward upon their sense as through their sense
Inward into their soul beat, and a while
Mute held them, hushed with wonder and with awe,
Awe to the Hebrew, to the Roman, joy.
Then said the Roman:
"This is like that place
Of glorious Homer where he hangs the sky
Innumerably bright with moon and stars
Over the Trojan host and their camp-fires:

'Holding high thoughts, they on the bridge of war
'Sat all night long, and many blazed their fires.
'As when in heaven stars round the glittering moon
'Shine forth exceeding beautiful, and when
'Breathlessly tranquil is the upper air,
'And in their places all the stars are seen,
'And glad at heart the watching shepherd is;
'So many, 'twixt the ships and Xanthus' streams,
'Shone fires by Trojans kindled fronting Troy.'"

"The spirit of Greece, with Greek simplicity,
A nobleness all of Homer, there I feel,"
Concession checking with reserve, said Saul;
"Our Hebrew, to us Hebrews, rises higher.
Homer, unconscious of sublimity,
Down all its dreadful height above our sphere
Brings the august encampment of the skies—
To count the number of the Trojan fires!
Our poet David otherwise beholds
The brilliance of the nightly firmament,
Seeing it mirror of the majesty
Of Him who spread it arching over earth,
And who yet stoops His awful thought to think
Kindly of us as Father to our race,
Nay, kingdom gives us, glory, honor, power,
And all things subjugates beneath our feet.
Let me some echoes from that harp awake
To which, with solemn touches, this his theme
Our psalmist David chanted long ago:
'Jehovah, our dread Sovereign, how Thy Name
'Is excellent in glory through the earth!
'Upon the heavens Thy glory hast Thou set;
'The heart of babe and suckling reads it there,
'And, raised to rapture, utters forth Thy praise,
'That mute may be the adversary mouth
'Which would the ever-living God gainsay.
'When I survey Thy heavens, Thy handiwork,
'The moon, the stars, Thou didst of old ordain,
'Man, what is he? that Thou for him shouldst care,
'The son of man, that Thou shouldst visit him.
'For Thou hast made him hardly lower than God,
'And dost with glory him and honor crown.
'Dominion over all Thy works to wield
'Thou madest him, and underneath his feet
'Put'st all things, sheep and oxen, roaming beast,
'And winging fowl, and swimming fish, and all
'That passes through the pathways of the seas.
'Jehovah, our dread Sovereign, how Thy Name
'Is excellent in glory through the earth!'"

Recited in slow solemn monotone,
As with an inward voice muffled by awe,
Those new and strange barbaric-sounding notes
Of Hebrew music shut in measured words
Smote on some deeper chord in Sergius' ear
That, trembling, tranced him silent for a while.
Then he said, rousing: "What a sombre strain!
From the light-hearted Greek how different!"

"Sombre thou callest it, and solemn I,
Who find in such solemnity a joy;
But different, yea, from the light-thoughted Greek."
Less as in converse than soliloquy
Deep-musing so to Sergius Saul replied.
"Our bard Isaiah modulates the strain
Into another mood less pastoral.
He pours divine contempt on idol gods,
On idol gods and on their worshippers;
And then majestically hymns His praise
Who made yon host of heaven and leads them out.
'To whom then will ye liken God?' he cries,
'Or what similitude to Him compare?
'The skilled artificer an image forms,
'And this the goldsmith overlays with gold,
'And tricks it smartly out with silver chains:
'Or haply one too poor for cost like this
'Chooseth him out a tree judged sound and good,
'And seeks a cunning workman who shall thence
'Grave him an image that may shift to stand!
'But nay, ye foolish, have ye then not known?
'Not heard have ye? You hath it not been told
'From the remote beginning of the world?
'From the foundations of the ancient earth
'Have ye indeed so missed to understand?
'He sits upon the circle of the earth
'And they that dwell therein are grasshoppers;
'He as a curtain doth the heavens outspread,
'And makes a blue pavilion of the sky.
'To whom then will ye liken Me? saith God;
'Whom shall I equal? saith the Holy One.
'Lift up your eyes on high, the heavens behold—
'Who hath these things created? who their host
'By number bringeth out, and all by names
'Calls? By the greatness of His might, for that
'So strong in power is He, not one star fails.'"

The deep tones ceased, and once more silence fell
Between those two amid the silent night.
But Sergius, lightly rallying soon to speech,
Said, with a ready, easy sympathy:
"There seems indeed to breathe in such a strain
Some solemn joy, but the solemnity
Is greater, and my spirit is oppressed.
Not less your poets differ from the Greek
In matter than in manner, when they sing.
How high you make your deity to be,
Beyond the stature of the gods of Greece!
Homer has Zeus compel the clouds, forth flash
The lightnings, and the thunderbolts down hurl;
The mightiest meddler with the world, his Zeus,
Yet of the world the mighty maker not.
But your Jehovah reaches even to that,
As with his fingers fashioning yonder heaven,
And fixing in their station moon and stars.
And he in human things concerns himself!
The Epicurean gods are cold and calm;
On high Olympus far withdrawn they sit,
And smile, and either not at all regard
Our case, or, if so be regarding, smile
Still, unconcerned, our case however hard.
Your Hebrew God is much more amiable,
But much more probable that Olympian crew;
Nay, probable not at all is either; dream,
Fond dream, the fable of divinities
Who either care, or care not, for our case.
We are the creatures and the sport of chance,
Puppets tossed hither and thither in idle play,
A while, a little while, fooled to suppose
We do the dancing we are jerked to do—
And then, resolved from our compacture brief
Into the atoms which once on a time
Together chanced and so were we, we drop
Plumb down again into the great inane
Abyss, and recommence the eternal whirl!
There is that Epicurean cosmogony,
An endless cycle of evolution turned
Upon itself, in worlds forevermore
Becoming, out of worlds forevermore
Merging in their original elements:
No god, or gods, to tangle worse the skein
Inextricably tangled by blind chance!"

Saul was affronted, but he held his peace,
Brooding the while his jealousy for God.
At length, with intense calm, he spoke and said:
"The Hebrew spirit is severe and says,
'The fool it is who in his secret heart,
Rebelling, wills no God.' 'The Hebrew spirit,'
Said I? Forget those unadviséd words;
For to speak so is not the Hebrew spirit.
God is a jealous God; His glory He
Will to another not divide; and God
Himself it is, the Living God, and not
What, Gentile fashion, my rash lips miscalled
'The Hebrew spirit,' that charges atheism
With folly. God His prophet psalmist bade
Write with a diamond pen on adamant
That stern damnation of the atheous soul:
'The fool hath in his heart said, God is not.'
This tell I thee my conscience so to cleanse
Of sin in saying 'The Hebrew spirit' for God."

With tolerant wonder, Sergius heard and said:
"A strangely serious race you Hebrews are;
I do not think I understand you yet.
I shall be glad to-morrow, if so please
Thee likewise, to renew this night's discourse."
So they descended from the hill and slept.

The herald Dawn, white-fingered, from the east
Had signalled to the stars, 'He comes! He comes!'
And these, veiling themselves from view with light,
Had all into the unapparent deep
Retired, and left the hemisphere of heaven,
Late glowing with their fixed or wandering fires,
One crystal hollow of pure space made void
To be a fit pavilion for the sun,
When forth from their encampment rode the twain,
Fresh as the morning from the baths of sleep,
And keen with hunger for the forward road.
"The allotment of my tribe," said Saul—"my tribe
Is Benjamin—in measure such, bare rock
And rugged hill, hardly through age-long toil
Of tilth so clothed as we have seen them clothed,
In terrace above terrace of won soil,
With verdure—that, we leave behind, to cross
This day the fatter fields of Ephraim."
Then Saul to Sergius rehearsed in short
The tale of Hebrew history, how God,
Having his fathers out of Egypt brought,
With sign and wonder thence delivering them
And hither led them through the parted sea,
And past the smoking top of Sinai—
Touched by the finger of God to burn with fire
And thunder and lighten more than man could bear
To see or hear, in sanction of His law—
Had lastly parcelled out this land to them
In portions by their tribes to be their rest.

While Saul to Sergius so discoursing spoke,
Over their right the sun, long since uprisen,
Climbed the steep slope of morning in the sky.
And now the summit of a ridge those twain
Reach, whence, straightforward looking, they behold,
In light so bright, through air so fair, a scene
Of the most choice the eye can rest upon.
A wide and long champaign of fruitful green,
On either side hemmed in with skirting hill,
Stretches before them to the bounding sky,
Where Hermon, scarce descried through distance dim,
Silvers with frost each morn his crown of snows.
Descended, they therein, through billowing wheat
Wind-swayed, might, to a watcher from the hill,
Seem laboring like two swimmers in the surf,
And hardly, in the fluctuation, way
Making whither they went; yet swiftly borne
Were they, and easily, onward. Soon Saul said—
And therewith pointed to two mountain peaks,
Seen towering on the left to lordly height,
Twin warders of a lesser vale between,
In stature twin and twin in symmetry—
"Ebal and Gerizim yon mountains are,
And these between the vale of Shechem lies,
Theatre once of oath and sacrament
Enacted by my nation with dread rite.
'A strangely serious race', thou yesterday
Calledst us Hebrews, strangely frivolous race
Surely were we, if somewhat serious not,
For we are heirs of serious history.
Yon natural amphitheatre thou seest,
Circled and sloped against those mountain sides
With spacious interval of plain enclosed;
There was the oath of our obedience sworn.
On Ebal half our tribes, and half our tribes
On Gerizim, stood opposite, and midst,
The tribe of Levi, God's peculiar tribe,
Stood in the vale about the ark of God,
Whence Joshua, our great captain, read the law—
He and the Levites, ocean-like the sound—
With blessing or with curse by God adjoined
As disobedient or obedient we.
This was when scarce our fathers had set foot
Hitherside Jordan in the promised land;
They from their stronghold camp came here express
To swear such solemn covenant with God.
Six hundred thousand souls of fighting-men,
With women and with children fourfold more,
Ranged on the one side or the other, joined
To them that mustered in the middle vale,
All heard the threatening or the gracious words,
And all, in multitudinous answer, said
'Amen!'—the tribes on Ebal to the curse,
And to the blessing, those on Gerizim,
Replying—choral imprecation dire
Upon themselves of every human ill,
If disobedient found, of promised good
Acceptance at the price, acknowledged just,
Of whole obedience to God's holy law.
It was as if Jehovah had adjured
All things, above, below, His witnesses,
'Hear, O ye heavens, and thou, O earth, give ear,
While thus My people covenant swear with Me.'
The host of Israel, though such numbers, heard—
These mountain-sides redouble so the voice."

"Theatric sacramental rite most weird,"
Said Sergius, "thou hast described to me.
Sure never elsewhere did lawgiver yet,
With ceremony such, a people swear
To obedience of his laws. The laws, I trow,
Subscribed and sealed with signature so strange,
Strange must have been. Example couldst thou give?"

"Of all those laws," said Saul, "doubtless the law
To Gentile ears the strangest, is the first;
That law it is which makes the Jew a Jew:
'Other than Me no god shalt thou confess;
'Image, resemblance, none, molten or carved,
'Of whatsoever thing in heaven, or earth,
'Or hidden region underneath the earth,
'Fashion to thee shalt thou, or bow thee down
'In service or in worship unto them;
'For I the Lord thy God a jealous God
'Am, and I visit the iniquity
'Of fathers upon children, chastisement,
'In long entail, on generation linked
'To generation, following hard the line
'Of such as hate Me, endless mercy shown
'To such as love Me and observe My law.
'Curséd be he who dares to disobey';
And Ebal, with its countless multitude,
Thundered to Gerizim a loud 'Amen!'
While heaven above and the wide world around
Hearkened in witness of the dreadful oath."

Saul ceased as mute with awe of memory;
And something of a sympathetic sense,
Communicated, also Sergius made
Silent in presence of such history.
Not long, for, rousing from his reverie,
And looking up before him nigh, he sees
A city with its walls and roofs and towers.
"Neapolis!" exclaims the Roman voice,
The Jewish, in tone different, "Sychar!" said.
"Neapolis! And here I halt," said Sergius;
"Sychar! And forward through Samaria, I,
Not pausing till this hateful soil be passed,"
Said Saul; "perchance to-morrow met again,
Beyond, we may together forward fare."

So there they parted with such slight farewell;
Nor after met, until, two morrows more
Now spent in separate travel, they had reached
The bursting fountain of the Jordan, where,
Forth from between the feet of Hermon born
Forever—in the joy and anguish born,
The certain anguish and the doubtful joy
Tumultuous of an everlasting birth—
Leaps to the light of life that famous stream,
Like many another child—from Adam sprung—
To run his heedless, headlong, downward course
And lose himself at last in the Dead Sea!
Here was what life, all-welcoming, lusty life,
Doom of what deadly worse than death was there!

A city here the tetrarch Philip built,
Or raised to more magnificent, which then,
In honor of dishonorable name
Imperial, Tiberius Cæsar, he
Called Cæsarea, and Philippi too
Eponymous therewith for surname joined;
But Paneas, earlier name, clung to the place,
As to this day it clings in Banias.

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