The Epic of Paul

by William Cleaver Wilkinson

A wild scene, for with outcry wild was mixed
Wild gesture; the whole madding multitude
Rent off their raiment, and into the air
Dust flung in cloud as where a whirlwind roars.
Astonished stood the chiliarch at the sight,
Nor doubted that some monster was the man
Against whom such a storm of clamor raged.
He bade bring Paul within the castle, there
Bade scourge him that he might his crime confess.
Already they had bound him for the thongs,
When Paul to the centurion standing by
Said, "Is it lawful for you then to scourge
A man that is a Roman—uncondemned?"
This the centurion hearing, straightway he
Went to the chiliarch and abrupt exclaimed:
"What is it thou art on the point to do?
For this man is a Roman." Then to Paul
Hastens the chiliarch and, perturbed, inquires:
"Tell me, art thou a Roman?" "Yea," said Paul.
Surprised, incredulous half, the chiliarch cried:
"I with an ample sum that franchise bought."
"But I," calmly said Paul, "was thereto born."

At that word from their prisoner, the men
Who ready round him stood the lash to ply
Instantly vanished, and the chiliarch too
Was panic-stricken—now in doubt no more
That Paul a Roman was, whom he had bound
For stripes, against a law greater than he,
Nay, sacred as the sacred majesty
Itself of the Republic—ancient name
Disguising empire!—law forbidding stripes
On any flesh that Roman title owned.

Paul slept, in Roman chains, the Christian's sleep,
That night, but ill at ease the chiliarch tossed
In troubled slumbers. He, with early morn,
To council called the Jewish Sanhedrim,
Set Paul unbound before them, and so sought
The truth to know of what on him was charged.
With calmly steadfast eye Paul faced his foes,
But Shimei smiled in confidence of guile;
Whatever the accused might seek to say,
Affront should meet him and torment his pride.
Paul, his fixed eyes pointing his moveless aim
Full in the faces of the elders, said:
"Brethren, in all good conscience have I lived
In loyalty toward God unto this day."
On such a claim from such a prisoner,
Angry the high priest Ananias cried,
"Smite him upon the mouth!" to those near by.
Paul flamed in answering righteous wrath, and said,
Flashing a lightning from his eyes on him:
"Smite thee shall God, thou whited wall! And thou,
Sittest thou here to judge me by the law,
And, the law breaking, biddest me be smitten?"

The bolted word had flown and found its mark,
And Paul stood quivering with the stern recoil.
But the bystanders, tools of Shimei,
In chorus of well-simulated zeal
Of reverence toward authority, cried out:
"The high priest, then, of God revilest thou?"
Tempting the outraged man to further vent
Volcanic of resentment at his wrong.
But Paul had tutored down his rebel will;
Meekly he said: "Brethren, I did not know
That he the high priest was, for it is writ,
'Of one that rules thy people speak not ill.'"

Through such self-recollection and self-rule,
Paul, master of himself once more become,
Became likewise master of circumstance.
Marking that Pharisee and Sadducee
Made up the assembly, he, with prudent choice,
As Pharisee to Pharisee appealed.
"Brethren," he cried, "a Pharisee am I,
From Pharisees descended; for the hope
And resurrection of the dead it is
That I this day am judged."

Discord hereon
Arose of Pharisee with Sadducee,
Which atwain rent the whole assembly there.
For Sadducee no resurrection owned,
No angel, and no spirit; Pharisee
These all confessed. A hideous clamor grew,
And certain scribes, who with the Pharisees
Sided, rose and, contending stoutly, said:
"No evil find we in this man; and if,
And if so be indeed, there hath to him
A spirit spoken, or an angel—" Thus
A hot dissension waxing, and afraid
Become the chiliarch lest his prisoner be
In sunder torn, the soldiery he sent
To pluck him from amidst the wrangling crowd,
And lodge him in the castle.

The next night
The Lord stood in theophany by Paul,
And said: "Be of good cheer; as thou of me
Hast witnessed in Jerusalem, so must
Thou also yet witness in Rome." And Paul
Was of good cheer in glad obedience,
And slept a sleep so leavened with happy dream.

But night-long lonely vigil Shimei kept,
Stung from repose to study of revenge.
At dawn, his hatch of hell, quick by the heat
Of brooding hatred in that patient breast,
Was ready to come forth and stalk abroad.
'Death to apostate Saul!' his public word,
'Death to that hated man!' was Shimei's thought.

Thought not so much, as law to him of thought,
Which formed and fixed the habit of the mind;
His thought was simply, 'How to get Paul slain,'
His feeling was a hatred bent to slay;
Now, bent to slay; once, but to torture bent.
This, partly because hatred is like love
Herein, that it, by only being, grows—
Until, at last, usurping quite the man,
It overgrows him like a polypus;
And partly because plot and act of hate
Sting to find hateful more the hated one,
Hate against whom is so self-justified.
But Shimei's hate of Paul, antipathy
At first, deep, primal, irreversible,
A doom born in him when himself was born,
And thence—from that time forth when in the hall
Of council Saul disdained and flouted him—
A conscious, fostered, festering grudge become—
This hate, now grown by but persisting long,
And much more grown through long self-exercise,
Had yet, beyond the private argument,
Its public ground of warrant for itself.
Mocker though Shimei was, not less was he,
To his full measure of sincerity,
Sincerely in his mockery a Jew;
His nation's scorn of Jesus was his scorn,
And who loved Jesus for that cause he hated.
Buoyed and supported by the spirit rife,
The common conscience, of his countrymen,
Nay, conscious of approval and acclaim
Without him, as of genius blithe within
Him, prompt to indirection and deceit,
Shimei, far more than clear and confident,
Felt also something of the fowler's joy
In cunning, as for Paul his toils he spread.

All this; yet all was not enough to fire
The hate that burned sevenfold in Shimei's breast.
With all, there was an alien element
Infused, Tartarean fuelling from beneath,
A breath of hell to blow his hate so hot.
No merely human hatred crucified
The Lord of glory and the Lord of love!
No merely human hatred followed Paul
On his angelic errand round the world,
With scourge, with ambush, with imprisonment,
And mouth agape to drink that holy blood!