Stanza 18.—Impossible! God is the giver: all that I have—Love, as well as everything else—is from him; I can wish, but cannot will the thing I would; but God can, therefore God will; his love cannot be frustrated as mine is; it must even for such as “Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now,” find Salvation; being infinite it must have its will, and find a way, however hard it be (see the striking line “it is by no breath,” &c.); and there it is! See the Christ stand!
Remember carefully the position as explained in the 15th stanza as you read the magnificent climax, beginning—
“O Saul, it shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee;”
observe also the effect of the spondee with which stanza 18 closes, instead of the usual anapæst; it gives wonderful dignity and strength to the thought. The same effect is produced several times in the early part of the poem by the same means, but nowhere with such power as in this, the grand climax.
What a contrast here to the petty mechanical notions of inspiration which have so often degraded the loftiest subject of human thought; and how marvellously is the presence and the power of the Unseen on such a soul as David’s imaged forth in the lines of the closing stanza, in words which seem almost to utter the unutterable.
AN EPISTLE
CONTAINING THE