The Epic of Paul

by William Cleaver Wilkinson

Drusilla thus half feigned contagious fears,
But half she felt them; for in truth she now,
So long in shadow from her husband's mood,
Was under power of gloomy imaginings.
Yet, felt or feigned her fears, she made them spells
This day to conjure with, when to her own
Image the little Felix's she joined
In desperate hope to spur her husband's spirit
Out of the slough of his despondency
And comfort him by making him comfort her.
But Felix was not fiber fine enough
To feel even, less to heed, appeal wrung out
Though from sincerest pain for sympathy;
And now his own crass egoism coarsely knew
How shallow, or how hollow, or how false,
This subtler egoism of his consort was.
Drusilla's art defeated its own end;
Felix more murkily lowered, and muttered fierce
Betwixt set teeth in husky tones and low:
"Aye, and why not thou too along with me?
Count thyself meant—thyself not less than me—
In what that memorable day was said
At Cæsarea in the judgment hall—
Said, and much more conveyed without being said—
By that Jew Paul, of dark impending doom.
If I am wicked, sure thou art wicked too;
The gods must hate us, if they hate, alike.
Let us, since hated jointly, jointly hate.
Perhaps compact and cordial partnership
Betwixt us in some hatred chosen well
Will be almost as good as mutual love!"
Drusilla to such savage cynicism
Gave loth ear bitterly, as one well sure
It were not wise in anything to cross
Her husband's brutal whim, and he went on:
"There is that milksop Sergius Paulus—he
Roman, forsooth! The Roman in his blood,
If ever Roman ran therein true red,
Has been washed white with something else infused.
I much misdoubt that Paul has brought him round
To be disciple of the Nazarene.
A pretty pair, a Roman and a Jew—
Like us, my dear Drusilla! And the Jew,
In either case, the chief one of the pair!"

With such communings entertained those two,
Adulterer and adulteress, the hours;
The passion that they once had miscalled love,
Yea, even that passion—long in either breast
With the disgust of sick satiety
Palled—now at length by guilt and guilty fears,
Brood of ambition disappointed, slain:
But in the ashes of such burned-out love
Smouldered the embers of self-fuelled hate,
Fell fire that thus on Sergius fixed its fangs!

Meanwhile that Indian Krishna, deep in muse,
Masked with impassable demeanor mild
From all about him, from himself even, masked
A trouble of wonder that he could not lay.
He gazed with gentle furtiveness at Paul
And strove to read the riddle of the man.
He felt Paul's spirit different from his own;
His own was placid with placidity
Resembling death, or trance and apathy
That would be, were it perfect, death. But Paul,
Not placid, peaceful rather, seemed to live
Not less but more intensely than the rest,
His fellow-creatures round him in the world;
A life of passion reconciled with peace!
'Impossible! Passion reconciled with peace!'
Thought Krishna; 'I seek peace through passion slain,
Expecting, I the seeker, not to be
At all, the moment I a finder am.
This Hebrew has the secret now of peace;
Strange peace, not passionless, but passionate!—
Extinction not of being, here forestalled,
Like that for which I strive by ceasing striving
(With fear lest after all I miss the mark,
And only strive to cease, not cease to strive)
Nay, no nirvâna antedated, his—
That hope of our lord Buddha hard to win—
But life increased with life to such a power
As is the mighty river's grown too great
To register in eddy or ripple even
Resistance in its channel overcome.
Is life then, boundless, better than blank death?'

So Krishna mused in doubt beholding Paul,
Until at last to Sergius Paulus he,
Breaking the seals of silence, spoke and said:
"If to thy thinking meet, bring me, I pray,
To speak with Paul, so named, thy friend as seems.
But first tell me who was, and what, that Jew
To such plight of sheer wretchedness reduced
That to be rid by lightning of his life
Seemed blessing, whatsoever might ensue
Hereafter to him in his next estate,
Doubtless some sad metempsychosis due.
Was he perhaps a kinsman near of Paul?"
"Nay, kinsman none, save as all Jews are kin,
Descended from the same forefather old,"
Said Sergius. "Then perhaps of some of those,
Near kinsman," Krishna said, "women with men,
Who watched with that long patience over him,
And won him as from death to life with love?"
"Nay, also not their kinsman," Sergius said,
Pleasing himself with saying no more, to see
How far the silence-loving Indian drawn
By unaccustomed wonder still would seek.
"Some reverend father of his people, then,"
Krishna adventured guessing, "whom, oppressed
With undeserved calamity, they yet
Honored themselves with honoring to the end?"
"O nay, far otherwise than such, he was,"
Said Sergius, "vile, most vile by them esteemed,
And that of rich desert, a man of shame
And crime committed or fomented still."
"Then haply—not of purpose, but by chance"—
Said Krishna, groping deeper in his dark,
"That vile man yet, if even by wickedness,
Had wrought some service to these kindly folk
Which they would not without requital pass?"
"Still from the mark," said Sergius, "thy surmise.
That evil man no end of evil deed
Instead had plotted and led on in guile
Against these gentle people to their woe.
Last, and but late, during this selfsame voyage
Of theirs from Syria to Rome, on board
That other vessel whence they came to us,
He sought, with midnight bribe and treachery,
To compass violent death for Paul, a man,
As thou hast seen, beyond belief beloved,
And for good cause, of all. That failing, he
With perjury and well-supported fraud
Of adamantine front and impudence,
Charged upon Paul attempt to murder him."

So Sergius Paulus, with some generous heat,
And horror of the heinous things he told.
He said no more and Krishna naught replied.

After much vexing controversy vain
With winds that varying ever blew adverse,
They had made the roadstead of The Havens Fair.
Here they dropped anchor, glad of peace and rest
And leisure to consider of their way,
Whether they still would forward stem despite
The threats of winter, or there wait for spring.

Krishna fell silent when those things he heard
From Sergius Paulus; silent Krishna fell,
But in his bosom shut deep musings up
Whereof the first he, in due season brought
To speech with Paul while they at anchor rode,
Propounded with preamble soft and suave
In words like these: "Much merit hast thou hope
Doubtless, yea, and most justly, to have earned,
Thou, and thy Hebrew fellow-voyagers,
With all that ill-deservéd kindness shown
Him, thy base countryman, whom, thunderstruck,
Fate hurried lately hence to other doom.
A millstone burden bound about the neck
Is karma such as his to weigh one down—
'Karma,' we say; but otherwise perhaps
Thou speakest; merit or demerit, what
Accrues to one inseparable from himself,
In part his earning, heritage in part,
The harvest reapt of virtue or of vice—
Aye, karma such as his was weighs one down
In dying, to new life more dire than death.
Hard-won a karma like thine own, but worth
The winning though ten thousand times more hard!"

Paul felt the Indian's gentleness and loved
Him with great pity answering him: "I know
Thy meaning, and I take the courtesy,
While yet the praise I cannot, of thy words.
My karma is not mine as won by me
With either easy sleight or hard assay—
The karma thou hast seemed in me to find:
That was bestowed, and is from hour to hour
With ever fresh bestowal still renewed.
I had a karma once indeed my own,
Much valued, wage it was of labor sore,
But it grew hateful in my opened eyes
And I despised it underneath my feet
To be as dross rejected and abjured."

Paul's sudden vehemence in recital seemed
Less vehemence from recalling of long-past
Strong spurning, than that spurning now renewed.
Unmoved the Indian save to mild surprise
Made answer: "Our lord Buddha teaches us
Our karma is inalienably ours,
The fatal fruit of what we do and are,
No more to be divided from ourselves
Than shadow from its substance in the sun.
But, nay, that figure fails; our karma is
Substantial and enduring more than we.
We die, our karma lives; it shuffles off
Us as outworn, and takes unto itself
Forever other forms to fit its needs,
Until the cycle is filled of change and change,
And misery and existence cease together.
Such karma is, the one substantial thing,
And such are we, mere shadows of a day.
Pray then explain to me how thou dost say
Thou ridst thee of a karma once thine own;
And how moreover thou canst add and say
Thou tookst another karma, given, not won.
I fain would understand the doctrine thine."

With something of a sweet despondency
Pathetically tingeing his good will,
Paul on the gentle Indian gazed and said:
"O brother, with all wish to meet thee fair,
Yet know I that I cannot answer thee,
Save as in parable and paradox
Beyond thine understanding, yea, and mine."