The Epic of Paul

by William Cleaver Wilkinson

Then softly they in unison began,
Softly, with yet their accent jubilant:

"'Had it not been Jehovah on our side,
Let Israel now'—let us as Israel—'say,
Had it not been Jehovah on our side,
When men, together sworn, against us rose,
Then had they truly swallowed us alive,
When sore their wrath against us kindled was;
The waters then had overwhelmed us quite,
Over our soul the rushing stream had gone,
Over our soul the proud exulting waters.
Forever blesséd be Jehovah Lord,
Who did not give us to their teeth a prey!
Escaped our soul is, like unto a bird
That is escaped from out the fowler's snare;
The snare is broken, and escaped are we.
Our help is in the Lord Jehovah's name,
In His name is, who fashioned heaven and earth.'"

They ceased, but presently Paul's voice alone:
"How those great words, which God the Holy Ghost
Spake by the mouth of men of old, elect
To be His earthly oracles—how they
Fill yet the mouth of him that utters them,
And fill the ear of him that hears them uttered,
And the heart fill of him that makes them his—
Fill, and, enlarging ever, ever fill!
They satisfy the soul, not as with food
That sates the hunger, to cry out, 'Enough!'
But as with hunger's self, and appetite
That never ceases crying, 'More! And more!'
Forever greater growing, and sweeter far
Than could be any stay to such desire!
According as the Lord Himself once spake
Pronouncing blesséd those whose hunger is
For righteousness, and promising to them
Fulness. Fulness without satiety
Their blesséd state! State blesséd, sure—to be
If only with that heavenly hunger filled!"

To Stephen half, but half in ecstasy
Of pure abandonment to worshiping
High passion and communion rapt above,
Paul so his heart disburdened of its praise.

"Yea," Stephen said, "it is a noble psalm,
Triumphal in its gladness at escape
Like thine from evil and from evil men.
With all my heart I sang it thankfully—
At least, if joyfully be thankfully;
Yet have I thoughts not uttered through that psalm."

The elder and the wiser well divined,
From something in the manner of the speech
Of Stephen, as too from the words themselves
He spoke, what was the spirit of those thoughts
Within him, which the chanted psalm left dumb.
Paul safer judged it for his nephew's health
Of heart and conscience, that the heat and stir
Of natural thought untoward in him find
Issue in utterance, than sealed shut to be.
"And what, then, nephew, were those thoughts of thine?"
In gentle serious question he inquired.

"How is it, uncle," swerving, asked the youth—
For a fine tact to feel what other felt,
Unspoken, unbetokened, though it were,
Was Stephen's, and this power of sympathy
Now gave him sobering sense of check from Paul—
"How is it, so thou deemest me meet to know,
I never hear thee speak of Shimei?"

"Ah, Stephen," Paul replied, "we lack not themes
To speak of, promising more food to thee
For sweet and gracious thought and feeling. Yet
I think of Shimei, and to God I speak
Of him in prayer, often, not without hope.
I never will abandon him to be
Himself, the self that now is he. Too well,
Too bitterly, I remember what I was,
I myself, once, as rancorous as he!
If guileful less, that was the grace of God,
Who made us differ from each other there.
Hateful to him I needs was, from the first,
But I was hateful more than needed be;
I helped him hate me by my scornful pride.
Would from his hate I could that strand untwine!
Hating Paul less, he less might Jesus hate;
Only to pity Shimei am I clear."

"Thy patience and thy meekness make me fierce
With anger, with ungovernable wrath
Most righteous," Stephen cried, "against those men
Who, hating, hunt mine uncle to the death!
I hate them, and I wish them—what themselves
Wish thee; dogs of the devil that they are!
I know a psalm that I should like to sing—
But I should need to roughen hoarse my voice,
And a tune frame well jangled out of tune,
To sing it as I would, and as were meet.
Thy pardon, but my rage surpasses bound;
To think of what thou art and what they are!
Some spirit in me, right or wrong, too hot
For any counsel, even thine own, to cool,
Forces unto my lips those wholesome words
Of hearty human hatred, God-inspired,
Most needful vent and ease to wish like mine;
I lift to God the prayer Himself inbreathed:
'Hold not thy peace, thou Lord God of my praise!
Who hath rewarded evil still for good,
And hatred still for only love returned,
Set thou a wicked one lord over him,
And Satan ever keep at his right hand.
When he is judged, then let him guilty prove,
And let his very prayer turn into sin.
Few let his days be, and his office let
Another take. His children fatherless,
His wife a widow, be. Nay, vagabonds
His children, let them beg from door to door.
All that he hath, let the extortioner
Catch, and let strangers make his labor spoil.
Let his posterity be utterly
Cut off, and in the time to come their name
Be blotted out. Let the iniquity
Of his forefathers still remembered be
In the Lord's presence, and his mother's sin
Not blotted out: because he persecuted
The poor and needy man, and those that were
Already broken-hearted sought to slay.
Cursing he loved, and cursing came to him;
In blessing he delighted not, and far
From him was blessing. He with cursing clothed
Himself as with his garment, and it sank
Soaking into his inward parts like water
And penetrating to his bones like oil.
Amen! Let cursing be forevermore
As if the raiment wherewith he himself
Covers, and for the girdle of his loins
About them belted fast forevermore!'"

Stephen felt blindly that the eager ire
With which he entered, flaming, on that strain
Of awful imprecation from the psalm,
Faltered within his heart as he went on—
Insensibly but insupportably
Dispirited toward sinking by the lack
Of buoying and sustaining sympathy
Supplied it from without; as if the lark,
Upspringing, on exultant pinion borne,
Should, midway in his soaring for the sun,
Meet a great gulf of space wherein the air
Was spun out thinner than could bear his weight.
He ended, halting; and there followed pause,
Which ponderable seemed to Stephen, so
Did his heart feel the pressure of that pause.
At length Paul said, with sweetest irony,
That almost earnest seemed, it was so sweet:
"Yea, nephew, hast thou, then, already grown
Perfect in love, that thou darest hate like that?"