But Ruth
Unhearing heard and was not comforted.
She raised her head from Stephen's breast, with act
As if to part herself in hope from him,
And, with regard made almost alien, said:
"Hug thou thy hope, thy hope is not for me.
He could not save himself, thy Christ, but died
As the fool dieth—and as die wilt thou,
If thou despise my counsel! Stephen, I
Would rather take my lot a little less,
Less large, less perfect, and less durable,
Than that thou figurest in thy fantasy,
So I might have it something different
From that, real, substantial, palpable
To sense, something whereof one could be sure.
I am no visionary. Take, say I,
With thanks the good God gives us now and here;
Not spurn His bounty back into His face,
And reach out emptied hands of wanton greed
To grasp at more He has not offered us.
We have no right to throw our life away!—
In hope of life hereafter, only ours
Then when with patience our appointed time—
'All' our appointed time, Stephen—we wait,
Till our change come."
Ruth's chill repellent tone,
Her mask of manner hard, could not deceive
Her husband, who, through such disguise with pain
Put on, well recognized a new device
Of wife's love, versatile as resolute,
Constraining tenderness to play severe.
Yet not the less for that, more rather, he
Felt at her words a dull weight of despair
Oppress his spirit; he could only pray,
In silent sorrow not to be expressed,
"O Holy Ghost of God, pity and save!"
A hundred times so praying for his wife,
In anguished iteration o'er and o'er,
Stephen not speaking sat, and speechless she.
At last, as if one bound with green withes rose
Rending the withes to rise, rose Stephen, sweat
Of supreme agony victorious
At dreadful cost dewing his brow; he took
His wife's hand solemnly and tenderly,
His port majestical compelling awe,
And, with tense speech, in tones that strangely mixed
The husband with the prophet, slowly said:
"Farewell, Ruth, for the hour is fully come
That I must hence. The burden of the Lord
Is instant and oppresses me. I go,
Whither I know not, but He knows, to bear
Witness once more to His most worthy name.
I thought that I should never preach again
His gospel in those temple courts, but now
Perhaps He wills even that; whatever be
His purpose, unforeshown, I welcome it.
"Lo, Ruth, this is the last time, for full well
I know I never shall come back to thee!
Come thou to me, I charge thee that, and bring
Our children to their father. Always think
Hereafter, 'He, that last time, charged me that!'
I think my God in this has heard my prayer,
And I go hence in comfort of some hope.
Our children! Oh! My children! God in heaven,
Have mercy! How a father pitieth
His children, think of that, and pity me!
A father lays them on a Father's heart;
Father, I charge Thee, by Thy father's-heart,
Not one be plucked from out His Father's hand!
Lord Christ, see Thou to this, in session there
Forever, interceding for Thine own!
"Ruth, give their father's blessing to our babes;
I trust that they will cheer their mother well,
When I am gone, and cheer thee to the end.
Their sweet unconscious voices now I hear
In laugh and prattle of pathetic glee!
I fain would see their faces once again,
Kiss them once more, and take a last caress!
But nay, I spare myself one pang; sweet babes,
They are too young to know! But by and by,
When they are older and will understand,
Then tell them thou what I now cannot, say,
'Your father loved you, loves you, and will love
Forever—that was his last word to me
For you.' So, Ruth, farewell!"
With first his hands,
Both, placed in solemn blessing on her head,
She kneeling by his knees, forth from his house
Therewith went Stephen all as in a trance.
With open eyes that saw not, yet with steps
Guided—how, he well knew, but whither not—
In simple rapt obedience, he his way
Took absently like one that walks in sleep.
Stephen his home had fixed in Bethany—
Sequestered hamlet on the slope behind
The Mount of Olives from Jerusalem.
Mary and Martha, here, and Lazarus,
He knew and loved; and with them oft, their guest,
Held converse sweet of what He said and did,
And was, the Friend Who wept when Lazarus died,
The Lord of life through Whom he lived again:
But Ruth, self-sundered from this fellowship,
Abode apart, or only with them bound
In bonds of kindly common neighborhood.
These marked when Stephen, marking not, passed by,
That day, steps toward the holy city bent,
And to each other said: 'He goes once more
Bound in the spirit to Jerusalem
To preach the gospel of the grace of God.
Behold the lit look on the forward face!
Behold the gait half-buoyed as if with wings!
It is like Jesus hastening to His cross!
Lo, let us follow!' and they followed him.
But he went ever onward, slacking not
His steps, nor heeding when the brow he reached
Of Olivet and thence, across the deep
Ravine of Kedron worn with rushing floods,
Before him and beneath him saw outspread
The city of David with its palaces.