The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Epic of Paul by William Cleaver Wilkinson.

Felix and Drusilla on the one hand and Krishna on the other disclose the contrasted feelings severally excited in them by what they had just witnessed in the lot of Shimei. Krishna seeks from his friend Sergius Paulus explanation of the relations that subsisted between those ministering Christians and the sufferer. He at length requests and obtains an interview with Paul, and the two have a conversation, one result of which is that Krishna asks to hear a full account of the life and character of Jesus Christ. Paul proposes that Mary Magdalené give this account, but Krishna courteously declines to receive it from the lips of a woman. The ship meantime puts in at The Fair Havens, whence, after a short stay in that anchorage, it sets sail, against the advice of Paul.

As one transported to a different sphere,
Some sinless planet fairer far than ours,
Amid new scenes and aspects there beheld,
Would watch and wonder and not understand,
So had the most of that ship's company,
Not understanding, but much wondering, watched
What passed between the wretched Shimei
And those his ministers of grace and love.

Felix, discoursing with Drusilla, said
(For he, by virtue of his being himself,
Perforced divined accordingly—amiss)
"Much painful cultivation, for no fruit!
Paul, turn and turn about, that time did seem
His enemy at advantage to have had,
And prospect was that Shimei, won to him
With all those unexpected services
(Sore needed, in such sorry case, no doubt!)
Would, could he first make shift to clear himself,
Right face about at Rome and, far from being
An adversary witness against Paul,
Swear him snow-white with turncoat testimony.
How easily king Jupiter, with that pass
Of playful lightning, brought it all to naught!"
Said Felix; then, with change abrupt from sneer,
Grim added this, in sullen afterthought:
"That lightning was a neat dispatch for him!
I wish that it had fallen on me instead."
"Ill-omened from thy lips such words as those,"
Drusilla answered. "And what love to me
Speak they, thy wife and queen—not with her lord
Joined in thine imprecation dire of doom?
Perhaps indeed we shall be separate
In death—with death, despite the difference,
But differently horrible to both!
For I have my forebodings, bred of thine,
And dread to be somehow hereafter caught
In some form of calamity unknown
But unescapable and horrible
And final and fatal as that Shimei's.
And what if he, our son (thine image—form,
And face, and character, and all) dear pledge
To me of love that once his father bore
His mother, happy she as worthy judged,
Once!—what if he, our little Felix too
Be in that dread catastrophe involved!"

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."

Paul so replied because his mind indeed
Sank in a sense sincere of impotence;
But partly too because he felt full well
How all-accomplished in the skill of thought,
How subtle, and how deep, the Indian was,
As how by nature and by habit fond
Of allegory and of mystery.
He deemed that he should best his end attain
Of feeding this inquiring spirit fine
With the chief truth, by frankly staggering him,
As the Lord staggered Nicodemus once,
With that which in his doctrine was the highest
And hardest to receive or understand,
Set forth in terms of shadow to perplex,
But also tempt to further curious quest.
Merging the Indian's idiom in his own
And lading it with unwonted sense, Paul said:
"That karma, erst so valued, I escaped
How? by becoming other than I was.
The old man died and a new man was born,
With a new karma given him, of pure grace,
A seamless robe of snow-white righteousness,
Enduement from the hand of One that died
To earn the right of so bestowing it.
Raiment of filthy rags with pride I had worn
Before, not knowing, painful patchwork pieced
Upon me of such works of righteousness
Mine own as cost me dear indeed, yet worth
Nothing to hide my nakedness and shame.
Now I am clad in Jesus' righteousness,
A shining vesture, with nor seam nor stain."

"Proud words, albeit not proudly spoken, thine,"
Said Krishna; "spotlessly enrobed art thou
In righteousness and karma without flaw,
Then thou hast reached the issue of The Way
And art already for nirvâna ripe:
Gautama could not make a bolder claim
When, conquering, he attained the Buddhaship.
Yet meekly thou madest mention of pure grace,
And merit all another's, not thine own.
A paradox indeed, perplexing me,
Such boldness mixed with such humility."
"Yea," Paul said, "the humility it is
That makes the boldness thou hast found in me;
It were defect of right humility
Not boldly to obey when Christ bids do.
Christ bids me take His perfect righteousness;
I can be humble but by taking it—
Boldly? yea, or as if boldly, for here
Humility and boldness twain are one."

"To thee thy teacher Christ," said Krishna, "seems
Something the same as Buddha is to me:
Yet other, more; not teacher simply, Christ
To thee, and master, setter forth of wise
Instructions and commands obeying which
Thou also now, as he once saved himself,
Mayst thyself save through merit hardly earned.
Thy Christ is will, not less than wisdom; power
And help, as well as guidance in the way.
Sovereign creator and imparter, he
Saves thee, thou trustest, through new life bestowed,
Which makes thee other than thou wast before,
And therefore frees thee from the fatal yoke
And bondage of the karma thou hadst won
With labor when thou wast the former man:
The words are easy, but the sense is hard."

"Hard?" Paul said; "nay, outright impossible
To any soul of man that still abides
His old first natural self unchanged to new.
Submit thyself unto the righteousness
Of God, and thou the mystery shalt know
With knowledge deeper than the mind's most deep
Divinings of the things she cannot speak."

"To fate, the universe, and necessity,"
Said Krishna, "I submit, because I must.
But to submit because I will, to any thing,
Much more to any one, that is, give up
My will, which is my self, my very self,
To be another's and no longer mine,
Consent to be another person quite
Than I have been, and am, and wish to be—
This thou proposest to me, if I take
Rightly thy words to mean thou thus hast done,
Becoming what thou art by vital change
From something different that thou wast before.
I frankly tell thee I have not the power
So to commute myself, had I the will."

"'I cannot' is 'I will not' here," said Paul;
"No power is needful of thine own save will:
Will, and thou canst; God then in thee is power.
Consider, it is only to submit."
"I feel my inmost will in me disdain,"
Said Krishna, "this effacement of myself."
"Yea, yea," said Paul, "it is the carnal mind
In thee, the primal unregenerate self
Ever in all at enmity with God,
Which is not subject to the law of God,
Neither indeed can be; to be, were death
To that old self which must resist, to live:
The carnal mind is enmity to God;
When enmity to God ceases in one,
Then ceases in that one the carnal mind,
The original man with his self-righteousness
His karma, if thou please, his good, his ill.
He is no more, and all that appertains
To him is dead and buried out of sight
Forever; but there lives a second self
By resurrection from that sepulcher—
By fresh creation rather from the dead—
A new regenerate man at one with God,
For to the law of God agreed in will,
Replaced the carnal with the spiritual mind,
Warfare and death exchanged for life and peace."

Into Paul's voice, he ceasing with those words,
There slid a cadence as of reverie:
He seemed to muse so deeply what he said
That he less said than felt it; 'life' and 'peace,'
So spoken, no mere sounds upon the tongue,
Were audible pulses of the living heart.
Invasion thence of power seized Krishna's soul,
And, 'Life and peace!' he murmured, 'Life and peace!'
But said aloud: "Strange union, peace with life!
We look for peace only with death, last death,
That death indeed beyond which nothing is,
No further transmigration of the soul,
No soul, no karma, all pure passionless
Non-being; not a state, since state implies
Some subject of a state, and here is none,
To do or suffer or at all to be:
Absolute zero, such the Buddhist's peace."

"'I am come,' Jesus said," so Paul replied,
"'That ye might have life, more abundant life.'
Life, life, deep stream and full, a river of God,
Pours endless, boundless, from the heart of Christ;
'Ho, every one that thirsteth, drink,' said He,
'Lo, drink and live with mine eternal life.'"

"I fear fallacious promises of good,"
Sighed Krishna; "life were good indeed with peace.
But me, I hope not any good save flight,
Save flight and refuge inaccessible
From persecuting and pursuing ill.
Being is misery; I would cease to be;
No hope have I, and no desire, but that.
Hope is for children; I am not a child
To chase the ends of rainbows, seeking gold:
There is no hope that does not make ashamed.
I dare not hope, eagerly, even for death,
Lest that likewise elude my clutch at last.
Despair no less I shun; despair is naught
But hope turned bitter and sour, postponed too long.
I only seek to cease from hope, from fear,
From every passion that can shake my calm.
Calm is my good, and perfect calm is death,
Therefore I wait for death with death-like calm.
Thou wouldst disturb the calm with hope of life,
Fair, but fallacious; let me alone to die."

With soft pathetic deprecation so
Krishna, in form of words, half faltering, begged
From Paul no more, yet added: "I would hear
Something of what he was, thy master; what
He did as well as taught; and whence he came,
And when, and where, and how; and how he lived
And died, having achieved his Buddhaship."

"For me," Paul said, "I never truly knew
My Master while He lived among us here,
Almighty God incarnate in the form
Of servant—glory and blessing to His name!—
Though after He in triumph from the dead
Rose, and ascended far above all height
Into the heaven of heavens to be with God—
Whence he had stooped the dreadful distance down
To His humiliation among men—
Then He revealed Himself in power to me,
And I beheld His face and heard His voice,
And knew Him for co-equal Son of God.
But thou, besides that in this power and glory
No man may see Him save He show Himself,
Wouldst wish a picture of the life He lived,
The manner of man He was, while still on earth,
The death He died, and how He died His death.
There is one here among us well can draw
The living picture thou wouldst look upon,
For she was with Him when He walked the ways
Of Galilee and Jewry doing good;
She saw Him suffer when by wicked hands
His blindfold yet more wicked countrymen—
Alas, among them I!—put Him to death.
With early morning at His sepulcher,
His emptied sepulcher, she weeping stood
And saw—but what she saw and all her tale
Of Jesus as she knew and loved Him here,
Is Mary Magdalené's right herself
With her own lips and is her joy, to tell."

"Lord Buddha would not let a woman teach,"
Indulging so much of recoil concealed
As might consist with utmost courtesy
Said Krishna; but, with wise avoidance, Paul:
"And Mary Magdalené will not teach,
But only in simplicity with truth
Bear testimony of eye-witness how
Immanuel Jesus lived His life on earth."

While thus they talked a movement on the deck,
Words of command and bustle to obey,
Betokened that the purpose was to leave
The sheltered anchorage of The Havens Fair
And tempt the dangers of the winter deep.
Paul saw it and suddenly broke off discourse
With Krishna, saying to him: "They err in this;
Surely we here should winter. Let me speak
A moment with the master of the ship."

Krishna with such surprise as disapproved
Dimly in his immobile features shown,
Watched while this intermeddling strange went on;
Strange intermeddling ventured, strangely borne,
Captive to captor bringing advice unsought;
For Paul to the centurion also turned
When now the master and the owner both
Agreed against him; but that Roman chose
Likewise his part with them to sail away.

BOOK XIII.

SHIPWRECK.

A violent storm occurs and the vessel is wrecked. Krishna, having carefully noted the part that Paul takes in the rescue of the lives of all on board, and having noted besides the miracles performed by Paul on the island of Malta where they come safe to shore, brings himself to signify now his willingness to hear from Mary Magdalené her story of Jesus Christ. A company assemble, including, with the Christians, Julius as well as Krishna, and Mary begins her narrative. This after a time is interrupted by a peremptory summons from Felix to Paul, to which Paul responds in person.

The south wind softly blew a favoring breeze
As forth they put and stood for Italy:
But that fair mother in her bosom bore
Offspring of storm that hastened to the birth.
For soon the fondling weather changed to fierce,
And, blustering from the north, Euraquilo
Beat down with all his wings upon the sea,
Which under that rough brooding writhed in foam
To whirlpool ready to engulf the ship.
No momentary tempest swift as wild;
But blast of winter wanting never breath
Poured from all quarters of the sky at once
And caught the vessel like a plaything up
Hurling it hither and thither athwart the deep.
The sails were rent and shredded from the masts;
The boat, to be the hope forlorn of life,
Was hardly come by, so the hungry wave
Desired it as a morsel to its maw.
The ship through all her timbers groaned and shrieked
And all her joints seemed melting with the fray
And fracture of the jostling elements.
At their wits' end, those mariners distraught,
Feeling the deck dissolve beneath their feet,
With undergirding helped the anguished ship;
While, worse than waters waiting to devour,
A sea of quicksand seethed, they knew, full nigh.

So the night fell but brought no stay to storm;
Fresh fury rather every darkening hour.

The dismal daylight dawned, and wind and wave,
Gnashing white teeth of foam, all round the ship
Howled like wild beasts defeated of their prey.
Then, as to bait those monster ravening mouths,
They portion of the lading overboard
Fling, in the hope that lightened so the bark
Springing more buoyant may outride the storm.

But the storm thickened as the third day dawned,
And not the crew alone but all on board
Worked the ship's gear in the increasing gale.
They thus bestead, the heavens above them lowered
Day after day that neither sun nor stars
One instant flickered in the firmament;
The blotted blackness made one dreadful night
Of day and night confounded in the gloom.
Hope now went out, last light to leave the sky,
Outburning sun and moon and star all quenched
Before her in that drowning drench of dark—
Hope too went out, touched by the hand of death.

Then Paul stood forth, himself with fasting faint,
Amid those famished faint despairing souls
And upward reaching high his hand to heaven,
There kindled once again the star of hope.
Chiding them fairly that they did not heed
His warning word betimes to shun that harm,
He gave them cheer that they should yet escape,
All should escape with life from this assay;
Only the ship must suffer wreck and loss.
"The angel of the Lord, that Lord," said Paul,
"Whose with all joy I am and whom I serve,
As ye have seen, with worship night and day,
Stood by me in the night and said to me:
'Fear thou not, Paul; thou art to stand in Rome
Before the bar of Cæsar; lo, thy God
Hath to thee given all those that sail with thee.'
Be of good cheer then, ye; for I believe
God that He will perform His word to me.
Upon an island look to find us cast."

Full fourteen days the ship went staggering on
A helpless hulk amid the Adrian sea,
When now the sailors, deeming that they neared
Some coast-line, sounded in the midnight dark;
Then farther drifting sounded once again
To find themselves indeed upon the shoals.
Here, fearing to be driven upon rocks,
They anchored, and so waiting wished for day.

And now a dastard thing those sailors schemed:
Under pretext to cast one anchor more,
As to that purpose they let down the boat,
Minded therein to steal their own escape
Leaving the rest to perish with the ship.
But Paul perceived their fraud and subtlety
And said to Julius with his soldiery;
"Let those men go and ye cannot be saved;"
Whereon the soldiers cut the lowering ropes,
Sending the boat to surf and reef a prey.

As broke the fourteenth morning yet forlorn,
Paul, unconfessed the captain of the ship
And master of his fellow voyagers,
In the dim twilight of the struggling dawn
Stood on the slippery deck amidst them all
And stoutly cheered them to take heart of hope
Break their long fast and brace themselves with food.
"For not a hair shall fall from off the head
Of any one of you," said he, and took
Therewith himself, in act more eloquent
Than spoken word, bread and gave thanks to God
In presence of them all; then breaking it
Forthwith began to eat; this heartened them
That they likewise strengthened themselves with meat.
Thus comforted, once more the laboring ship
They lighten of her lading and the wheat
Sow in the barren brine.

The land descried
They knew not, but there was no land unknown
That were not better than that wallowing sea.
So, cutting loose their anchors, they made sail
And drove the vessel aground upon a beach,
Where the keel plunged into the yielding sand
Which closing heavy upon it held her fast;
But the free stern rocked on the billowing surge
That soon atwain must break her in the midst.

Hardness of habit and of discipline
Partly, and partly a self-regarding fear
Lest they be held to answer with their lives,
If even amid the mortal panic pangs
Of shipwreck they should let their charge escape,
Made now those Roman soldiers, in the jaws
Themselves yet of the common peril hung,
Ready to put their prisoners to the sword;
But Julius stayed them for the sake of Paul.
"You that can swim," he shouted, "overboard!"
Some thus, and some on spars buoyed up, and some
On other floatage of the breaking wreck,
They all got safe to shore, not one soul lost.

The master of the rescue still was Paul;
Calm, but alert, completely self-possessed—
(Possessor of himself, yet not himself
Considering, save to sacrifice himself
Freely at need); his courage and his hope
Inspiring hope and courage; self-command
In him aweing the rest to self-command;
His instinct instant and infallible
Amid the terror and the turbulence,—
Winds howling and sea heaving and strait room
For nigh three hundred souls in face of death!—
Each moment seeing ere the moment passed
What the need was and what the measure meet
To match it—that serene old man and high
Was as an angel there descended who
Could had he chosen at once have stayed the storm,
But rather chose to wield it as he would.

The captain of the vessel and the man
Whose was the vessel, these, with Julius too,
Roman centurion as he was in charge,
Grouped themselves close by Paul and heard his word
And had it heeded without stay by all.
"I shall be last to leave the ship," Paul cried,
"Do therefore ye the things that I advise.
The women first. Lady Drusilla, thou
Commit thyself to four picked sailors, these"—
The master of the vessel chose them out—
"Two soldiers with them—Julius, by thy leave
And of thy choice—and on this ample spar
Supported thou shalt safely come to land;
And, Madam, thy little son shall go with thee."
They lashed them to the timber, lowered it fair
(With Felix desperately hugging it,
The image of a sordid craven fear);
The men detailed leapt overboard to it,
And steering it as they could with feet and hands
Let the sea wave on wave wash it ashore:
She was indignant to be rescued so,
But by abrupt necessity was tamed.

"Let me, I pray thee, save thy sister, Paul,"
Said Sergius Paulus, who, assuming yea,
Forthwith led Rachel—she with such a grace
Of confidence in him as made him strong
Following—to where a fragment of the deck
Disjointed in the vessel's agony
Lay loosened, which he clove and wrenched away;
Then watching when the vessel listed right
And the sea met it with a slope of wave,
They, this beneath them, clinging to it, slid
Down the steep floor into the frothing brine
Stephen was by and helped them make the launch.
Sergius, from the side opposite to her—
To steady the light wreckage all he might
Lest wanting balance it should overturn—
Reaching across, kept Rachel's fingers clasped
In hold upon the wavering wood, until,
What with his oarage and the wash of waves,
They found a melting foothold on the sand.

Krishna stood wishing to be serviceable,
And when to Aristarchus, stout and brave,
Paul was commending Mary, at a look
From the Indian that imported such desire,
Leave was given him to undertake for Ruth.
Each of the two life-savers rent a door
From off its hinges and thereon secured
The women awed in that extreme assay
Yet girded to a constancy of calm,
And, Stephen helping, lowered them to the deep.
Krishna was let down after by a rope,
No swimmer he, but Ruth too held the rope
And drew him to the float whereon she tossed.
Greek Aristarchus was a swimmer born
And practised, and he plunged headforemost down,
Soon to emerge with easy buoyancy
And aim unerring true where Mary rode.
The two then—Aristarchus in the lead
Teaching the Indian how, and, with the rope
Flung to his hand at his desire by Ruth
And by him featly bound about his waist,
Drawing the floatage forward, while his own
He pushed with swimming—won their way to shore.
Twice Aristarchus was, for stress of wave,
Fain to release his hold upon his float,
So fierce the tug, and sudden, at his waist;
But he, by swimming and by seamanship
Consummate joined to strength well-exercised,
Strength by the exigence redoubled now,
Both times regained it and thenceforward kept.
Mary meanwhile, forsaken, faltered not;
She felt the stay of other hands than his.

All his advices and permissions Paul
Put forth in such continuous sequence swift
That well-nigh simultaneous all they seemed:
The vessel swarmed with ordered movement mixed,
And the sea lived with strugglers for the shore.
Of all these only Simon had the cool
Cupidity and temerity to risk
Weighting himself with treasure to bear off
In rescue from the wreck; he his loved gold,
Ill-gotten gains of sorcery and of fraud,
Secretly carried with him safe to land.

Stephen did not lack helpers; Julius bade
Varenus, of the soldiers, serve his wish;
And Syrus, a young slave of Felix's,
Sprang of his own free motion joyfully
To help him pluck Eunicé out of scath;
For he had marked the youthful Hebrew pair
With distant, upward-looking, loyal love
Instinctive toward such virtue and such grace.
But, "Nay," Eunicé said, "not yet for me;
See there those trembling creatures"—the hand-maids
Of dame Drusilla—"rescue first for them!"
On a good splinter of the tall curved stem—
The sign of Ceres at the gilded beak—
By the rude violence of the shock torn off
When the ship grounded, they tied the two slave girls;
But the shipmaster fair Eunicé's act
Of self-postponing nobleness admired,
And bade two trusty seamen help let down
That beam life-laden soft into the sea
Whither they, at the master's further word,
Followed it, as with frolic leap to death,
And brought it safely to the wave-washed shore.
Then Stephen and Eunicé, each to each
As if in a symbolic bond of fate
Linked, with a length of rope allowing play
Between them for their wrestle with the surge,
And having each in hold a wooden buoy
Provided with what might be firmly grasped,
Wieldy in size yet equal to support
Them safe above the summits of the sea,
Were lowered by eager volunteers who all
Sped them to their endeavor for the land.
They reached it and thanked God for life such prize.

The soldiers that were bidden overboard
To take their chance of swimming to the beach
Bore with them lines which, stretched from ship to shore,
Became the means of saving many souls;
The most were thus, some buoyed on floats of wood,
Some dragged half drowning through the sandy surf,
Landed at last—forlorn, but yet alive.

Paul was not, as he had his will to be
Announced, quite last to leave the breaking bark;
Centurion Julius would not have it so.
When all except the owner of the ship
And the shipmaster and himself with Paul
(And Luke, who would not quit the apostle's side)
Were safe ashore, he intervened for Paul.
Now so it was, the mast to which was tied
The rescue-line beneath the strain gave way
And fell with a great crash along the deck.
On this those four made fast the brave old man
Who with his counsel and his cheer had saved
So many, counting not his own life dear
But seen, the crisis of the need now past,
Exhausted, tremulous, and nigh to sink.
Then having with great strength—helped by a lurch
That now the vessel seasonably gave—
Pushed smoothly overboard the noble spar
Entrusted with that treasure of a life,
Prompt they plunged after it into the brine,
And having reached it, clung to it, and well
Buoyed up upon its surging lift, were borne
Themselves with Paul by urgent wind and wave
Safe to the beach, where those arrived before
Met them with outstretched arms and cheers and tears.

The island of their refuge and escape
Was Melita: the Melitans were kind,
And though they spoke a tongue not understood
By Hebrew, Greek, or Roman stranded there,
And bore the name 'barbarian' from the Greek,
Yet were they alien not; in deeds they used
A universal language of the heart.
Kindling a fire, most grateful—for the rain
Fell drenching and the weather was windy cold—
Those shipwrecked strangers all they entertained.

Now so it happened that to Paul, he too
Ranging to gather fuel where he could
And fetching soon a fagot to the fire,
Sudden there sprang a viper from the heat,
Warmed from his winter dormancy to life,
And angry fastened hanging on his hand.
The islanders beholding doubted not
But here some murderer, saved in vain from death
By shipwreck, now was suffering vengeance due.
Paul lightly shook the deadly reptile off
Into the flames and felt no harm. But they,
The islanders, kept jealous watch to see
The dooméd victim of those fatal fangs
Swell with the venom in his veins, or drop
Haply at once a corpse upon the ground.
After long disappointed watch, no sign
Of hurt perceived in Paul, they changed their mind
And said among themselves, "He is a god."

The chief man of the island, Publius,
Houses and lands possessing in those parts,
Gave Paul and his companions welcoming cheer
In three days' courteous hospitality—
Not unrequited; for the father lay
Wasting with fever and worse malady
In the son's house; but Paul went in to him
And prayed and laid his hands on him and he
Was healed. Then others also of the sick
Among the Melitans came and were healed.
So Paul had honors from them thrust on him;
These he divided with a liberal hand
To all, and when at last they left the isle
They went thence laden with a plenteous store
Bestowed of what they needed on their way.
But all the winter long they tarried there,
Waiting for spring to open up the sea;
And many an hour was theirs for various talk,
They fenced in sunny places from the wind
Or grouped about their outdoor fires for cheer.

The Indian Krishna, uncomplaining, bland,
With that quick quiet eye which naught escaped
And that deep-studying mind which rested never,
Had slowly by degrees, considering all
That Paul wrought or was wrought through Paul, been won—
Against a passive incredulity
Inert but stubborn and resistant still,
The instinct and the habit of his mind—
To judge that Jewish prisoner otherwise
Than when he hearing Paul give his advice
Unasked about the conduct of the voyage
Had fixed on him the blame of meddlesome.
He owned an awe of Paul's authority
Exerted for the rescue of the lives
Of those that sailed with him; he shared the power
Of hope and courage that went forth from Paul,
His words, his deeds, and, more than either, himself.
He did not quite escape some sense, inspired
By Paul's thanksgiving when he broke the bread,
Of other presence than Paul's own in Paul
That lifted him to higher than himself.
When he saw Paul from his uninjured hand
Shake that fell viper off into the fire,
He half-confusedly thought: 'That seems not strange;
Our Indian serpent-charmers do as much.'
But when those gifts of healing flowed from Paul,
Not singly, but in troops of miracle
Sufficing the whole island countryside,
With only prayer and laying on of hands,
Then at last Krishna said: 'I do not know,
Is there some power in him greater than he?
What power? Not Buddha, unconfessed, unknown,
Yet willingly with that large tolerance his
And bounty and sweet unconcern to claim
Acknowledgement of his gifts, working in Paul
Despite—nay, Buddha not, he long ago
Passed, and while living never power was he,
Though wisdom manifold. Yea, wisdom is,
That know I, power; but not the converse holds,
That power is wisdom; and pure power it is,
Not wisdom, that in Paul these wonders works;
No healing arts he uses, no medicine.
Whence is the power? Or what? Is Christ the power?'

In sequel of communings such as these
Held with himself, Krishna recalled the thought
Of the rejected proffer made him late
By Paul, of Mary's story of the Christ.
He now would hear it, if but still he might;
And so one calm bright day when winter smiled
As if in dream and vision of the spring,
With proud repression of his natural pride
He brought himself to say to Paul: "O Paul,
If thy friend Mary Magdalené yet
Will deign so great a grace to me, who own
My scant desert of it, I with all thanks
Would hear her tell the story of her Lord,"
A group of those who, loving and honoring her,
Loved from her lips again and yet again
To hear the story, old but ever new,
Of their belovéd Lord, were gathered then,
With Sergius Paulus welcomed of their band
And Krishna and the kindly Julius too,
In a recess sequestered of the shore
Where the sun shining from the open south
Made a sweet warmth at noon, and whence the sea,
So capable of fierceness, now was seen
With many-sparkling wavelets beautiful
And gentle in demeanor as a lamb.

Cast in no mould of outward loveliness
To lure the eye, but of a native worth
Such that her person noble seemed, and tall
Her stature—all instinct with stately grace
Her gesture and behavior—Mary sat
That vernal winter noon amid her friends,
Throneless and crownless, an unconscious queen:
Yet over all in her that made her state
Seem regal there presided the effect,
Other and finer, of a lofty mind
Arrived through sorrow to serenity,
And in the heart of pathos finding peace.
Such, Mary; who now thus took up her tale:
"The story of my knowledge of the Lord
Begins in shadow, shadow of shame for me;
At least I feel it for a kind of shame
To have been chosen of demons their abode;
The recollection is a pang to me.
I sometimes dare compare it in my mind
With what Paul suffers"—and she glanced toward Paul
A holy look of reverence understood—
"'Thorn in the flesh,' he calls it, but my thorn,
Within my spirit rather, rankles there,
As messenger of Satan buffeting me
Lest I should be exalted above measure—
I, to whom Christ the Lord used first His voice
Uttering that 'Mary!' when He from the dead
Rose in His glory. Surely I well should heed
How Mary, honored so, was the abode
Once of seven demons. Why this should have been
I cannot tell, unless to humble me.
Sometimes my pride—or is it sense of worth,
Sacred and not rebukable as pride?—
Whispers me, 'Mary, thou wert therefore choice
Of demons for their dwelling-place on earth,
Because thou wert pure found and they desired
A refuge that should least resemble hell.'

"Oh, how they rent me with their revelry,
The hideous tumult of their joy in sin!
And me they mixed up with their obscene mirth,
Till half I doubted it was I myself
Foaming my own shame out from helpless lips
That blasphemed God, then laughed with ribald glee.
I was not mistress of my mind or heart;
Reason in me was a distracted realm,
And will and conscience seemed like ships at sea
Driven with fierce winds and tossed toward hopeless wreck.

"I wonder at myself that I do not
Fight against God who strangely suffered it.
But, never, never! He suffers many things
Strangely, but I, this is His grace in me,
Bow down at all of them, saying, 'Amen!'
The crown of all my reasons for believing
That God is gracious, is that I believe.
For why do I believe, except that He
Makes me believe, against so many signs
Seen in the world abroad which swear in vain
He is not good? O, ever-blessed God,
Who let those demons seven take up in me
Their lodgment, that they might be so dislodged!

"On an accepted day for me the Lord
Was passing through the city where I dwelt,
And one that knew my miserable case
Implored Him to have mercy upon me.
He heard, He condescended, and He came.
But how at His first footsteps of approach,
How did those inmates evil within me rave!
What riot, mixed of panic and despair
And hatred! The whole land elect where Christ
Upon this earth appeared, when He appeared
Was rife with insurrection from the pit
Mad in attempt against Him. So in souls
Possessed by spirits from hell, if Christ drew nigh
Outrageous spasms of futile fury raged.
Those demons seven in me usurped me now
With tenfold more abominable rape.
They with my fingers clutched and tore my hair;
Gnashed with my teeth, and flickered with my tongue;
They frothed from forth the corners of my mouth
With foul grimace and execrable grin;
In random jaculation hither and thither
Flung my arms wildly like a windmill wrought
To ruin in a whirlwind's vortices;
Writhed all my bodily members, till I thought,
With what of power to think was left to me,
That surely nothing of corporeal mould
Had strength enough of life to suffer more."

While Mary Magdalené told these things,
Her noble face took on disfigurement
Expressive of indignant horror and shame;
And hardly had she been still beautiful
But for a pathos fine of gratitude
Tenderly crescent in it to the full,
That all was of the past, no present pain,
Naught but a memory! When her aspect cleared
And she composedly went on again,
It was as if the full moon late eclipsed
With clouds rode from amid them forth serene
In splendor, regent of the altered sky.
"Those were the pangs of my deliverance,
The throes of evil possession overcome.
'Come out of her!' He said; straight at that word,
Rending me like a travail and a birth,
They fled, and left me as one slain with wounds.
But it was a delicious sense of death.
I would be dead like that to be at peace!
I hugged the death-like trance in which I lay,
Until another word from the same voice
Made it seem sweeter yet to live indeed.
'I say unto thee, Maid, arise!' I heard
And I arose, obeying, I knew not how;
It was as resurrection from the dead,
Or first creation out of nothingness."

The Indian bent on Mary telling all
A fixed and eager heed that veiled itself,
As wont was to this devotee of Buddh,
Under a mask of face expressionless.
He quenched in silence of quick second thought
Impulses strong to speak and quit himself
Of doubts and questions starting in his mind.
He abode mute, and Mary, after pause
Filled to each one with various thought, resumed
"How glad was I, and grateful, when the Lord
Permitted me, with other women too
Healed by Him of distresses like to mine,
To follow, in the ways of Galilee,
His footsteps as He went from place to place
On His unending rounds of doing good!
He had not where to lay His head, was poor
Though making many rich; and it was joy
Unspeakable to us to minister
Out of our substance to His daily needs.
'Give to us day by day our daily bread,'
The prayer was that He taught us. God through us
Answered that prayer to Him and we were glad!

"Not all those whom he cleansed of spirits foul
Inhabiting and defiling them did He
Permit to follow with Him as they wished.
One man, perhaps as sorely vexed as I,
Being healed, entreated leave to stay with Him.
It may be there was some defect of faith,
Whence fear in him lest he, not with the Lord,
Might again be invaded by that host
Of wicked angels whom he 'Legion' called,
And Jesus out of kindness was austere,
To exercise him to a better trust
Needing not crutch of sight to stay itself.
I know not; this I know, and rest content,
He doeth all things well, His choice is wise.
The Master sent that man away, and bade:
'Return to thine own house and publish there
How great things God hath done to thee.' He went
And filled that favored city with the fame.
Who knows? It may have been a better lot,
More blesséd, to sound forth the Savior's praise
And thus prepare him welcome among men,
As did that healed demoniac, than to be,
As I was, near His person in the flesh.
But nay, nor more nor less, no difference, all
Is equal, and all blesséd perfectly,
To all that simply meet His blesséd will!"

Some subtle charm of eloquence, made up
The listener thought not how, thought not indeed
That there was any charm of eloquence—
Manner perhaps, a flexure of the voice,
Accent of clear simplicity with depth,
A strand of pathos braided into it,
The capture of an all-subduing eye—
These things in her, but more than these, herself,
Say rather the Spirit of God inhabiting her,
Made Mary speaking irresistible.
Krishna did not withstand the undoing spell,
But yielded more and more, as still she spoke:
"O, it was dreadful to behold his case,
That demon-ridden man's! No clothes he wore,
But fetters and chains instead, which could not bind
His frantic strength to hold him anywhere.
Like a wild beast in lair he lived abroad
Housed but in rocky hollows of the hills.
No man dared pass his way, so fierce was he,
Cutting himself with stones among the tombs.
When he saw Jesus coming, still far off,
He ran toward Him and prostrate worshipped Him,
Crying with a most lamentable voice:
'Lo, what have I to do with thee, O Thou
Jesus, Thou Son of God Most High? I plead
And I adjure Thee by the name of God
That thou torment me not!' For Christ had said,
'Thou unclean spirit, come thou forth from him!'
'What is thy name?' asked Jesus; and he said:
'Legion, for we are many.'

"What was strange
Then happened; for the demons prayed from Christ
To be not wholly banished from the land.
'Send us,' they cried, 'into the swine'—for near
Were feeding a great herd of swine—and Christ
Gave them their whim to enter into them.
Wherefore, I cannot tell; the Sadducees
Among our people had no faith in spirits,
Angels or demons; so it may have been
To show it no mere foolish fancy vain,
As they, the Sadducees, had taught it was,
That there are wicked beings, other than we,
Unseen and spiritual, errant in the world,
And that these sometimes truly may invade
The holy of holies of the human mind,
That sanctuary meant for God's indwelling,
And wrest it to their own foul purposes.
No Sadducee I trow had Sadducee
Remained, that saw that day the hideous rout
Made when those swine, two thousand hoofs together,
Rushed headlong down the lakeside precipice
To perish in the waters; reason none,
Save that the demons had gone into them.
It was not sudden assault of epilepsy;
"Those swine at least did not imagine it all!"—
Over the face of Mary speaking now
A moment of sarcastic humor played—
"A woman herself possessed, then dispossessed,
Of demon inhabitants, may be forgiven
A little natural scorn to be assured
That she was only shaken in her wits!"
And Mary so recovered with a smile
The sweet and holy candor of her face.

But now an interruption—for there came
Rudely, from Felix sent, a minion who,
With little Felix following him, to Paul
Drew nigh and said: "My master bids thee come,
For Simon whom he honors has fallen sick,
And he would have thee heal him." Summons such
Delivered in curt wise so insolent,
Betrayed the master through the messenger.
"Go tell thy master that I come," said Paul;
"Go thou, but leave the lad to come with me."

So Paul took little Felix by the hand,
He well-pleased equally to stay or go
In that benign companionship, and went.
But first Paul said: "Perhaps the afternoon
Already is far spent enough, the cool
And damp of evening will draw on apace;
To-morrow, if God will—and Mary please—
Our hearing of her tale may be renewed."

They, thus dispersed, and slowly following, saw
Paul like a guardian angel in the guise
Of a serene old man and venerable
Lead on the boy and heed his prattling talk.
He had the ruffled spirits of his friends,
Indignant all at Felix's affront,
Composed with only his superior pure
Detached Christ-like serenity and calm.

BOOK XII.

PAUL AND KRISHNA.

BOOK XIII.

SHIPWRECK.