Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift,

That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here the parts

shift?

270

Here, the creature surpass the creator, the end, what began?
Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man,
And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone can?
Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less

power,

To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous dower Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul, Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole? And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest)

These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best?

Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height This perfection,-succeed, with life's dayspring, death's minute

of night?

Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul, the mistake,
Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now, - and bid him awake
From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set
Clear and safe in new light and new life, a new harmony yet

280

To be run and continued, and ended — who knows? — or endure !
The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to make sure;
By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss,
And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles in this.

18.

"I believe it! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive : In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe. All's one gift thou canst grant it moreover, as prompt to my

prayer,

290

As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air.
From thy will, stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread Sa-

baoth :

I will?—the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth

To look that, even that in the face too?
Think but lightly of such impuissance?
'tis not what man Does which
Would do!

This ;

Why is it I dare

What stops my despair?

exalts him, but what man

See the King-I would help him, but cannot, the wishes fall

through.

Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,
To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would knowing which,
I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now! 300
Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou-

thou!

so wilt

So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown—
And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath,
Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death!
As thy love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved
Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being beloved!

He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak.

310

'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me, Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See the Christ stand!"

19.

I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware:
I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there,
As a runner beset by the populace famished for news

Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with

her crews;

And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot 320 Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not,

For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed
All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,
Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.
Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth
Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth;
In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills s;
In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills;
In the startled wild beasts that bore oft, each with eye sidling still
Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and

chill

330

That rose heavily as I approached them, made stupid with awe : E'en the serpent that slid silent away he felt the new law. The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers; The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine

bowers:

And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low,

With their obstinate, all but hushed voices

"E'en so, it is so!"

320 et seq.: see note to St. 37, 38, of By the Fireside.

A DEATH IN THE DESERT.

[SUPPOSED of Pamphylax the Antiochene :
It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth,
Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek
And goeth from Epsilon down to Mu:

Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest,
Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth,
Covered with cloth of hair, and lettered Xi,
From Xanthus, my wife's uncle, now at peace:
Mu and Epsilon stand for my own name.
I may not write it, but I make a cross
To show I wait His coming, with the rest,
And leave off here: beginneth Pamphylax.]

I said, "If one should wet his lips with wine,
And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find,
Or else the lappet of a linen robe,

Into the water-vessel, lay it right,

And cool his forehead just above the eyes,

The while a brother, kneeling either side,

Should chafe each hand and try to make it warm,
He is not so far gone but he might speak."

20

1-12. The bracketed prefatory lines, explanatory of the parchment on which are recorded the last hours and last talk of St. John with his devoted attendants, purport to have been written by one who was at the time the owner of the parchment. It appears to have come into his possession through his wife, a niece of the Xanthus who, with Pamphylax of Antioch, the supposed author of the narrative (he having told it on the eve of his martyrdom to a certain Phœbas, v. 653), and two others, is represented therein as waiting on the dying apostle, and who afterwards "escaped to Rome, was burned, and could not write the chronicle." (vv. 56, 57.)

4. And goeth from Epsilon down to Mu: the reference is to some numbering on the parchment.

6. terebinth: the turpentine tree.

This did not happen in the outer cave,
Nor in the secret chamber of the rock,
Where, sixty days since the decree was out,
We had him, bedded on a camel-skin,
And waited for his dying all the while;

But in the midmost grotto: since noon's light
Reached there a little, and we would not lose
The last of what might happen on his face.

25

I at the head, and Xanthus at the feet,
With Valens and the Boy, had lifted him,

And brought him from the chamber in the depths,
And laid him in the light where we might see:

30

For certain smiles began about his mouth,
And his lids moved, presageful of the end.

Beyond, and half way up the mouth o' the cave,
The Bactrian convert, having his desire,
Kept watch, and made pretence to graze a goat
That gave us milk, on rags of various herb,
Plantain and quitch, the rocks' shade keeps alive :
So that if any thief or soldier passed

(Because the persecution was aware),

Yielding the goat up promptly with his life,
Such man might pass on, joyful at a prize,

Nor care to pry into the cool o' the cave.
Outside was all noon and the burning blue.

"Here is wine," answered Xanthus, - dropped a drop;
I stooped and placed the lap of cloth aright,

35

40

45

23. the decree of persecution of the Christians, perhaps that under Domitian. The poet probably did not think of any particular persecution.

36. the Bactrian convert: in vv. 649, 650, he is spoken of as "but a wild childish man, and could not write nor speak, but only loved." Bactria was a kingdom in Central Asia; the modern name is Balkh. having his desire: as a new convert, the simple man was eager to serve, even unto death. 41. aware on the lookout; exercising a strict espionage.