The Epic of Paul

by William Cleaver Wilkinson

Not till now ever, since the fateful time
When, buoyant with the sense of his reprieve
Won for a season from the contact loathed
Of Shimei, Paul rode forth Damascus-ward,
Had they two in such mutual imminence met.
Paul looked at Shimei now, not with regard
That, like a bayonet fixed, thrust him aloof,
Or icily transpierced him pitiless;
But in a gentle pathos of surprise,
With sorrow yearning to be sympathy—
Reciprocal forgiveness interchanged
Between them, and all difference reconciled:
A melting heaven of cloudless April blue
Ready to weep suffusion of warm tears,
The aspect seemed of Paul on Shimei turned.
Good will, such wealth, expressed, must needs good will
Responsive find, or, failing that, create!
But Shimei did not take the look benign
Of Paul, to feel its vernal power; downcast
His eyes he dropped and missed the virtue shed—
Missed, yet not so as not some gracious force,
Ungraciously, ill knowing, to admit.

"Thou knowest this fellow-countryman of thine?"
To the apostle speaking, Julius said.
"I know him, yea," said Paul. "And knowest perhaps,"
Said Julius, further sounding, "what the chance
Of mischief from him thou hast late escaped?"
"Nay, but not yet have I, I trow," Paul said,
"Escaped the evil he fain would bring on me.
He hates me, and, if but he could, he would
Quite rid me from the world; that know I well."
"But knowest thou," the centurion pressed, "how he
Plotted last night to have thee overboard
To wrestle, swimming, with the swirling sea?"
"Nay," Paul said, "nay; I knew not that." He spoke
Without surprise couched in his tone; far less,
Horror or fear expressed in look or act;
No sidelong stab at Shimei from his eye;
Only some sadness, with the patience, dashed
The weariness with which he spoke. "And yet—
And yet," he added, half as if he would
Extenuate what he could, "it is his way,
The natural way in which he works his will.
His will I well can understand, though not,
Not so, his way. From that I was averse
Ever, but once I had myself his will."
"Thou canst not mean his will to get Paul slain,"
Baffled, the Roman said. "Nay, but his will
To persecute and utterly to destroy,"
Said Paul, "the Name, and all that own the Name,
Of my Lord Jesus Christ from off the earth."

At that Name, thus with loyal love confessed,
The hoarded hatred, deep in Shimei's heart,
Toward Jesus, which so long had fed and fired
The embers of the hatred his for Paul,
Stirred angrily; it almost overcame
The cringing craven personal fear in him.
Though he indeed spoke not, uttered no sound,
There passed upon his visage and his port
A change, from abject while malign, to look
Malign more, and less abject, fierce and fell.
It was a strange transfiguration wrought,
An horrible redemption thus achieved—
From what before one only could despise
To what one now, forsooth, might reprobate!
The quite-collapsed late liar and poltroon
Rallied to a resistant attitude,
Which stiffened and grew hard like adamant,
While further Julius thus his wiles exposed:
"The 'way' of this thy fellow-countryman,
O Paul, thou hast yet, I judge, in full to learn.
When, by the soldier whom he sought to bribe
For thy destruction, of his crime accused
To me, how, thinkest thou, he would purge himself?
Why, by persuading me that Paul, instead,
Had himself bought his keeper to forswear
Against him, Shimei, such foul plot to slay.
Hold I not well thou hadst something still to learn
Of the unsounded depths his 'way' seeks out?"

Julius said this with look on Shimei fixed,
Full of the scorn he felt, each moment more.
Like the skilled slinger toying with his stone
Swung round and round in air, full length of sway,
Through circles viewless swift, but in its pouch
Uneasy, at his leisure still delayed
For surer aim and fiercer flight at last,
And that, the while, the wielder may prolong
Both his delight of vengeance tasted so,
And his foe's fear accenting his delight;
Thus Julius, dallying, teased to wrath his scorn,
More threatening as in luxury of reserve
Suspended from the outbreak yet to fall.

The while the scornful Roman's wroth regard
Fixed as if caustic fangs upon the Jew,
The Jew, with stoic endurance, steeled himself
To take it without blenching. Full well felt
Through all his members was that branding look;
Though his eyes still were downward bent, as when
He dropped them to refuse Paul's sweet good will.
But suddenly now, he one first furtive glance
Lifting, as if unwillingly, to Paul,
Shimei takes on a violent change reverse.
A wave of abjectness swept over him
That drenched, that drowned, his evil hardihood
And wrecked him to a ruin of himself.

Julius who saw this change had also seen
Shimei's stolen glance at Paul; he himself now
Turned toward the apostle with inquiring eye.

What he saw seized him and usurped his mind—
His passion with a mightier passion quelled,
Or to another, higher, key transposed:
The wrathful scorn that had toward Shimei blazed
Became a rapt admiring awe of Paul.
For there Paul stood, the meek and lowly mien,
The sadness and the patience, not laid by,
But an unconscious air of majesty
Enduing him like a clear transpicuous veil,
Self-luminous so with cleansed indignant zeal
For God and truth and righteousness outraged,
That he was fair and fearful to behold.
God had made him a Sinai round whose top
A silent thunder boomed and lightnings played.
White holiness burned on his brow, a flame
The like whereof the Roman never saw
Glorifying and making terrible,
Beyond all fabled gods, the front of man.

The exceeding instance of this spectacle
It was, filling the place as if with beams,
Not of the day, but stronger than the day,
That had perforce drawn Shimei's eyes to see—
A moment, and no more. As seared with light
Fiercer than they could bear, again they fell.
Then all the man with saving terror shook
To hear Paul speak—in tones wherein no ire,
As for himself, entered, to ease the weight
With which the might of truth omnipotent
Pressed on its victim like the hand of God:
"Full of all subtlety and mischief! Thou
Child of the devil, as doer of his deeds!
Accurséd, if thou hadst but plotted death
Against me, death however horrible,
That I had found a light thing to forgive.
But to swear me suborner like thyself
Of perjury"—But the denouncer marked
How, under his denouncement, Shimei quailed:
He in mid launch the fulmination stayed.
His adversary victim's broken plight
Disarmed him, and a sad vicarious sense
Of what awaited such as Shimei
Hereafter, penetrated to his heart.
As shamed from his indignant passion, Paul
Instantly melted to a mood of tears.

This Shimei less could bear than he had borne
Those terrors of the Lord aflame in Paul.
The old man shaken with so many sharp
Vicissitudes of feeling, sharp and swift:—
Hope from despair, despair again from hope;
Then fresh hope from the ashes of despair;
That costly hardening of the heart with hate,
And steeling, to resistance, of the will;
Next, a soul-cleaving anguish of remorse,
New to him, mingled with forebodings new,
Menaces beckoning from the world to come;
These, with the unimagined tenderness
That now reached out and touched him in Paul's tears—
The old man, plied and exercised thus, broke
Abruptly from the habit of a life,
Utterly broke, and suddenly was no more,
At least for one sweet moment of release,
The hard, the false, the bitter, the malign
Shimei of old—changed to a little child!
In both his quivering hands his face he hid,
And, all his strength consumed to scarcely stand,
Wept, with convulsion poured from head to foot,
But made no other sign, to this from Paul:
"As I forgive thee, lo, forgive thou me,
Shimei, my brother! And Christ us both forgive!"

The Roman wondering saw these things and heard,
Nor moved in speech or gesture, touched with awe.
But when now all was acted so, and seemed
There nothing was to follow more, he turned,
And, not ungently, though with firm command,
Said to the soldier: "Lead him hence away
To keeping; make his manacles secure.
Thou wilt not, I suppose, a second time,
Try ear or tongue in parley—never wise.
Thou hast lost somewhat in this adventure; see
Thou win it back with double heed henceforth."