"Fall, brethren, I adjure you, haste to fall
Betimes upon this stone and bruise your pride;
Wait but too long, this stone will fall on you:
Not then your pride, but you, not bruised will be,
But ground to undistinguishable dust."
So Stephen spoke; and ceased, as loth to cease.
The moments of his speaking had been like
A slow and dreadful imminence of storm.
With those august and awful opening words
Of his, which were not his, but God's, it was
As when an altered elemental mood
Usurps the atmosphere; the winds are laid,
Clouds gather, mass to mass, anon perchance
Roll back, disclosing spaces of clear sky,
But close again, deeper and darker, full
Of thunder, silent yet, of lightning, leashed
From leaping forth, but watchful for its prey.
Such had been Stephen's speaking, boded storm;
His ceasing was the tempest burst at last—
A silent tempest, silent and unseen,
Rending the elements of the world of soul!
Meanwhile the angels in attendance there,
Watching with eyes that see the invisible
Things of the spirit of man within his breast,
The posture and behavior of the mind,
Had seen exhibited amidst that late
Motionless multitude of souls suspense
With supernatural awe, a spectacle
Of consternation and precipitate flight
To covert, such as sometimes is beheld
In nature, when a mighty tempest lowers,
And man, beast, bird, each conscious living thing,
Shuddering, hies to hiding from the wrack.
With wild inaudible outcry heard in heaven,
That shattered congregation, soul by soul,
Each soul its several way, fled, to find shroud
From spiritual tempest hurtling on the head,
Intolerably, hailstones and coals of fire.
But one excepted spirit stood aloof,
Scorning to join the fellowship of flight.
Like a tall pine by whirlwind lonely left
Upon his mountain, forest abject round,
This man dared lift, though sole, a helmless brow
Of stubborn hardihood to take the storm.
Others, dismayed, might flee to refuge; Saul,
Not undismayed, fronted the wrath of God.
Shimei alone there neither stood nor fell;
By habit grovelling, on his belly prone,
Already prostrate he had thither come.
Incapable of awe from good inspired,
He, abject, but without humility,
Ever, by force of reptile nature, crawled;
And now had crawled, as, dusty demon's-heart
And vitreous eye of basilisk, he still—
With equal, though with different, enmity,
Devising death for Stephen in his mind,
And studying slow prolonged revenge for Saul—
Watched all, whatever chanced to either there;
But most, malignantly delighted, watched
Deepen the settled shadow on Saul's face
Cast from the darkness of his inner mood.