At Myra safe arrived and anchor cast,
That Adramyttian vessel disembarked
Her voyagers bound to Rome, and went her way.
When she at Cæsarea touching found
That Jewish prisoner there and bore him thence,
She had suddenly gone sailing unaware,
In transit as of star athwart the sun,
Into the solar light of history;
At Myra parting with him she passed on
Into the rim of dark and disappeared:
A moment in a light she guessed not of
Illuminated for all time to see,
Then heedless dipping deep her plunging keel
And foundering in the gulfs of the unknown!
A bark of Egypt seeking Italy,
Wheat-laden of the fatness of the Nile,
Swung resting in the Myra roadstead nigh.
Hereon were re-embarked that company,
Paul, and the friends that sailed with Paul to Rome—
Fallen Felix too, with his wife spurring him
To hope yet and to strive and still be strong.
Alexandreia sent the vessel forth,
City twice famous, joining to her own
The august tradition of her founder's fame,
The mighty Macedonian's mightier son,
Great Alexander who the whole world gained
Indeed—with what for profit of it all?
At this sea-gate wide opening to the West,
From all the East men met and hence dispersed—
That current laden most which drew to Rome.
Besides from Egypt her hierophants,
Hence thither flocked those worshippers of fire
From Persia holding Zoroaster sage,
Astrologers of Assyria, and from Ind
Confessors of the somber faith of Buddh.
Of many such as these on board that bark
One Indian Buddhist votary there was
Worthy of note: a gentle-mannered man
Deep in himself involved, as who mused much
Of hidden things and hard to understand,
The pathos of the mystery of the world,
The human strife, with the defeat foregone
Companioning the strife and ending it—
Yet ending not a strife that could not end,
But ever, round and round, one dull defeat,
Trod the treadmill of fate, no hope, no goal.
A gentle-mannered man, but sad of cheer,
Krishna his name, pilgrim of many climes,
Not idly curious to behold and learn,
But hiding pity in his heart for men
Seen everywhere the same, poor blinded moles
Toiling and moiling in the sunless mines
Of being, where no joy, whence no escape.
Escape none, or, if any, then escape
Impossible to win except by slow,
And unimaginably slow, process
Of suicide to endless date prolonged,
Æons on æons following numberless,
And fatal transmigrations of the soul
From state to state, from form to form, of self:
Yet progress none that might be felt the while,
But one long-drawn monotony instead
Of labor waste in movement seeming vain,
Cycles of change returning on themselves
Forever, bound to orbits that revolve
Eternal repetitions of the same
Vicissitude (the weaver's shuttle flung
Tediously back and forth from hand to hand—
Or swinging pendulum), 'twixt death and birth,
Lapses from misery to misery
Always, prospect like retrospect stretched out
To vista and perspective vanishing
Of path to be pursued and still pursued
By the undaunted seeker of an end—
He by his own act dying all the time
In ceaseless effort utterly to cease,
Will willing not to will, desire desiring
To be desire no more, pure apathy,
No hope, no fear, no motion of the mind,
Until, through dull disuse and atrophy,
Extinguished be capacity itself
To do or suffer anything, and so,
Down sinking through the bottomless abyss
Of being, at last the fugitive go free,
Emancipate but by becoming—naught!
Krishna thus deeming of his fellow-men,
Their present and their future and their fate,
Hid a vast pity in his heart for them,
Pity the vaster that he could not help.
This melancholy man compassionate,
Who might in musing to himself seem lost,
Yet saw and heard with vigilant quick sense
Whatever passed about him where he stood,
Or where he sat—for most he moveless sat,
Moveless and silent, on the swarming deck.
One man indeed he spake with, yet with him
His speech, grave ever, he spared, and sheathed in tones
Soothingly soft and low like blandishment.
That one man was a Roman; Roman less
To seeming than cosmopolite—his air
An air of long-accustomed conversance
With whatsoever might be seen and learned
Through much Ulyssean wandering to and fro
And up and down among his fellow-men,
And watching of their works and words and ways.
This Roman citizen of the world, mailed proof
In habit of a full-experienced mind
Against commotion from surprise, was now
Visibly moved to wonder seeing Paul.
His wonder checked with reverence and with love
Indignant to behold the captive state
Of one deserving rather wreath than bond,
He stepped toward Paul and with such homage paid
As liege to lord might pay saluted him.
"Grace unto thee, my brother," answered Paul,
"From the Lord Jesus Christ, thy Lord and mine!"
They twain fell on each other's neck and kissed
With tears. Such salutation and embrace—
No more; but this with variant mood was marked
By three that saw it. The centurion
Blent in his look pleasure with his surprise;
But Felix and Drusilla frowned askance
(They also knowing the Roman, as at court
Courtiers know one another—without love);
Those frowned askance, and mixed their mutual eyes
In sinister exchange of look malign
Portending sequel if the chance should serve;
And in Neronian Rome the happy chance
Of mischief, but be patient, scarce could fail!
That gentle Indian with his pregnant eye
Saw all and mused it—then, and after, long—
The cheerful, joyful, reverent greeting given
A Jewish prisoner by a Roman lord
And by the Jewish prisoner so returned
In unaccustomed words ill understood
But solemn like the language of a spell;
This, with the Roman captain's look benign
Approving what surprised him yet; nor less,
The menace of the mutual scowls that met
Darkening each other on the alien brows
Of Felix and Drusilla at the sight—
Most like two clouds that, black already, blown
Together, shadow into a deeper dark!
In due time, anchor weighed with choral sound
Of sailors' voices cheering each himself
And each his fellow in a formless tune,
The ship from out the haven slowly slid,
Urged with the oar but wooing too the wind
With slack sail doubtful drooping by the mast.
Large planes of lucid ocean tranced in calm
They traversed with loth labor of the oar,
Or else were buffeted of winds that blew
Thwart or full opposite day after day,
While they hugged close the Asian shore, then Rhodes
Saw southward, mooring fair her fruitful isle.
The leisures long-drawn-out of those delays,
To Paul and to his friends were prize and spoil.
Grown wonted to the sway of wind and wave,
They spent, cradled at grateful ease, the slow,
Soft-lapsing, indistinguishable hours
That wore the sunny summer season out,
In various converse or communion sweet
Oft with mere sense of mutual nearness nursed.
"Who was that kindly courteous gentleman,"
Thus at fit moment Rachel asked of Paul,
"That spoke so fair my brother coming up?
Roman he seemed, and lordly was his air;
Yet something other, sweeter, differenced him
From his compatriot peers, and I observed
Thou gavest him thy grace from Christ the Lord."
"That, Rachel," Paul replied, "was one I knew—
Almost mightst thou have known him—long ago
In Tarsus; we were boys together there.
But since then twice, with now this added time,
Has God in wisdom made our pathways meet.
That Roman to Damascus went with me
And saw, what time the glory of the Lord
Blinded me to behold at last the True.
But him that glory, seen not suffered, left
For outward vision what he was before,
While inwardly with denser darkness blind,
Reclaimed from atheism to idolatry!
But God had mercy on him; years went by,
And I, with Barnabas to Cyprus come,
Found there this selfsame Roman, governor.
The skeptic whom theophany had made
Religious not, but superstitious, now
Led captive of delusion—worldly-wise
Albeit he was, yet unto God a fool!—
Was given up wholly dupe and devotee
Of a deceiver, Jew, Bar-jesus named,
Pretender to the gift of prophecy.
This sorcerer dared withstand us to the face
Before the governor, who had summoned us
(Not dreaming whom he summoned summoning me)
To tell him of the word of God. But I,
Filled with the Spirit of the Lord—mine eyes
On him, that sorcerer, fastened—uttered words
Which God the Faithful followed with such blast
And blight of blindness on the wretched man
That he groped seeking who would lead him thence.
The governor beheld and wonder-struck
To see God's work God's word at last believed.
The pagan playmate of my boyhood so
Became the changed soul thou hast seen him here,
In Jesus brother, loving and beloved;
And Sergius Paulus thou his name mayst call."
"O Saul," said Rachel, "in what history
Of marvel following marvel has thy life,
Since when that noon Christ met thee in thy way
Damascus-ward, been portioned out to thee!
The stories of the prophets old whom God
Wrought through to show His people how behind
The thick veil of His outward handiwork
He Himself lived and was a present God—
Those tales of wonders, let me own it, Saul,
Had grown to me to seem so far away
From our time, and so alien from the things
We with our eyes behold, hear with our ears,
Much more, with these our hands perform, that I
Almost had fallen, not into disbelief
(Not that, ever, I trust—nay, God forbid!)
Concerning them, but into a listless mind
Which to itself no image of them framed—
Fault well-nigh worse than outright disbelief!
That now the things themselves, nay, things more strange,
Should be by God repeated in the world,
Nor only so, that one of mine own blood,
My brother, should a chosen vessel be
Of this great grace of God through Christ to men—
This less with wonder than with awe fills me,
And I—believe not, faith were name too faint
For passion such as mine is—I adore!"
Paul bent on Rachel eyes unutterable
Wherein a sense of sympathy serene
Betwixt himself and her he talked with, shone,
And they twain dwelt in a suspense supreme,
Silent, of adoration where they stood—
The rapture of doxology unbreathed
To either doubled as by other shared.
At length Paul spoke; his tones intense and low
Thrilled through the ear of Rachel to her heart:
"O Rachel, He who out of darkness once
Bade the light shine, God, shined into our hearts
Enkindling there this dayspring from on high,
This light of knowing from the face of Christ
The glory inexpressible of God!"