Cleaver

“ For a man of might hath breathed on the edges amidst much craft of spells, so that nought may master that blade, save one of its brethren fashioned by the same hands, if such there be yet upon the earth, whereof I misdoubt me. Now then thou hast the sword; but I lay this upon thee therewith, that thou be no brawler nor make-bate, and that thou draw not Board-cleaver in any false quarrel, or in behalf of any tyrant or evil-doer, or else shall thy luck fail thee despite the blade that lieth hidden there. ”

“ Of life lived wholly without God, and vain,
Paul sighed in spirit and thought: 'The world, the world!
How vast and dreadful, overshadowing all!
How strong and dreadful, dominating all!
Kingdom and usurpation in the earth!
What power shall overthrow thee, so enthroned
As thou art at the center of all things
In Rome, and wielding, thou unshaken there,
Thence wielding all the shaken universe
Implement in thy hand to wreak thy will? ”

“ Poor Jean Jacques, little dreamed you, in that cruel moment, that one day before the King of France and all the court, thy sounds would excite murmurs of surprise and applause, and that in all the boxes around thee the loveliest ladies would burst forth with, "What charming sounds! what enchanting music! every strain reaches the heart!"
But what restored every one to good humor was the minuet. ”

“ This tender mediatrix between us and the Eternal, with a heart full of compassion for our miseries, forces us to confide in her maternal aid, and disarms the vengeance of Heaven. What an enchanting dogma, that allays the terror of a God by causing beauty to intervene between our nothingness and his Infinite Majesty. ”

“ Paul let the searching of himself, begun
And busy in the spirit of the youth,
Go on in silence for a while; and then
In gravest sweet sincerity he spoke:
"Hating is sweet and wholesome, for the heart
That can hate purely, out of utter love.
But who for these things is sufficient—save
God only? God is love, and He can hate.
But for me, Stephen, mine own proper self,
I dare not hate until I better love. ”

“ To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
Chateaubriand posed all his life as the wearied Colossus, smiling pitifully upon a pigmy world, and contemptuously affecting to desire nothing from it, though at the same time wishing it to be believed that he could if he pleased possess himself of every thing by mere force of genius. ”

“ So had Paul learned to let the peace of Christ
Rule in his heart, a fixed perpetual calm,
Like the deep sleep of ocean at his core
Of waters underneath the planes of storm.
And Stephen answered: "Oh, with God, with God!
And blesséd be His name that thus I choose!"
"Yea, verily," Paul said, "for He sole it is
Who worketh in us, both to will and work
For the good pleasure of His holy will.
As thou this fashion of obedience
Obediently acceptest at His gift,
So growest thou faithful mirror to reflect
Clear to thyself, and just, the thought of God. ”

“ Then Rachel, with the Everlasting Arms
Invisibly, nigh visibly, around
Her to sustain her steps, came forth, as one
That meekly walks leaning on her beloved,
And begged of Ruth that she might sister be
To her, that day, and thenceforth ever, mourn
As sister with her in the eyes of all.
"For I am lonely," Rachel said, "O Ruth,
As thou art; lonely let us be, we twain,
Together, widows both, and mix our tears.
For also I am widow, as thou art,
Yet not as thou—since me a heavier stroke
Makes widow, who have never been a wife!" ”

“ Magnificence, illuminations, all France, dresses all gold and brocade, jewels, braziers full of fire, and stands full of flowers, confusions of carriages, cries out of doors, lighted torches, pushings back, people run over ”

“ He now was my own sort, I never thought
To strain myself above my natural mark
With him; we were hail fellows, he and I,
And talked the harmless wise that such know how.
With thee—oh, sir, myself I quite forsook,
And slipped into a different Shimei.
Pity my weakness, I am sick of it;
To ape the great is folly for the small—
But small may hope forgiveness from the great!"
The chiliarch listened, unconvinced; yet charmed,
Like the bird gazing by the serpent charmed. ”

“ It is impossible to deny to the obstinacy that refused to burn even a pinch of incense to the god of her nation’s idolatry, for the sake of permission to return to every thing that she loved—it is impossible, we say, to deny to this obstinacy in Madame de Stael the title of a true and heroic virtue. ”

“ Are we, helpless and choiceless, to be formed
And fashioned into vessels at His will!"
"Helpless, yea, Stephen," Paul said, "but choiceness not;
We choose, nay, even, we cannot choose but choose—
The choice our freedom, our necessity:
Free how to choose, we are to choose compelled.
We choose with God, or else against Him choose.
Which wilt thou, Stephen? Thou! ”

“ My Stephen has pondered deep these things,
And to result of truth well worth his pains.
Thou hast profited, my son, perhaps beyond
Thine own thought of thy profiting, in sweet
Acquist of wisdom from the mind of Christ.
Fair change, change fair and great, in thee since when
Thou cursedst Shimei in that bitter psalm!—
Bitter from thee who saidst it bitterly.
Behold, thou art fain, forsooth, to find those words,
Those same words now which then thou likedst well
Rolling them under thy tongue a morsel sweet,
Almost too human for at all divine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Suddenly the dying man raised himself by his wrists and cast on his frightened children a look which struck like lightning; the hairs that fringed the bald head stirred, the wrinkles quivered, the features were illumined with spiritual fires, a breath passed across that face and rendered it sublime ”

“ Express not human hate, but hate divine,
Revealed in forms of human speech, and, too,
Inspired in whoso can the height attain
To side with God, and passionlessly damn,
As if with highest passion, any found—
Whom, known not yet, even to himself not known,
Much less to thee or me, but known to God,
And to be known, in that great day, to all—
Fixed in his final choice of evil for good.
Henceforward, Stephen, when thou sayest that psalm,
Say it and tremble, lest thyself be he,
The man thou cursest in its awful curse! ”

“ And they now knew the doom required for Paul.
Paul was left lonely of all men save Luke;
But Luke the faithful chose with him his part.
Paul longed for Timothy, and wrote to him
Bidding him haste and bring John Mark to Rome.
But the end hasted more than these could haste,
And Timothy was never in the flesh
To greet again that father of his soul
Who, for the son's sake more than for his own,
Yearned toward the son to fix in him his faith
Seen nigh to falter in the face of things
Such as now fronted Paul. ”

“ It is a public misfortune that the most powerful poet of a nation should not have better understood his rôle, and that, unlike those Hebrew prophets who scourged because they loved, he should devote himself proudly and systematically to the flattery of his countrymen. France is the world; Paris is France; Hugo is Paris; peoples, bow down!
Amiel had a just perception of the immense healing virtue lodged in happiness:
What doctor possesses such curative resources as those latent in a spark of happiness or a single ray of hope? ”

“ With thee for sister, Rachel," Saul replied,
With fondness and self-pity, as he kissed
The pure young brow upturned toward him; "but me,
Thou dost not know me as I know myself."
"O nay, but better, brother," Rachel said;
"Right hate is good, as good as love. So, hate,
But not thyself, Saul. Shall I tell thee one
To hate? I hate him, and I counsel thee,
Hate, Saul, that evil man I saw but now
Steal from his too long privilege at thine ear."
"Him, Rachel," Saul replied, "I cannot hate;
Hatred is made impossible by scorn." ”

“ Rachel, methinks thou mightst have spared me this!
But nay, my sister, better is it so.
Haply no barb less keen had stung me back
To my old self and made me Saul again—
The weakling that I was, to pule and weep,
As if the cause were lost and all were lost!
I thank thee, sister, thou hast done me good,
Like medicine—like bitter medicine!
Tell me true, Rachel, thou didst feign me this,
To rouse me from my late unmanly swoon.
That is past now; I rise refreshed and strong,
I see my path before me, stretching straight,
I enter it to tread it to the end. ”

“ The claim of Jesus to Messiahship
Assert, and from the psalms and prophets prove.
In guise a seraph rapt, with love aflame
And all aflame with knowledge, like the bush
That burned with God in Horeb unconsumed,
The fervent pure apostle Stephen stood,
In ardors from celestial altars caught
Kindling to incandescence—stood and forged,
With ringing blow on blow, his argument,
A vivid weapon edged and tempered so,
And in those hands so wielded, that its stroke
No mortal might abide and bide upright.
Stephen is such as Saul erelong will be
Risen from the baptism of the Holy Ghost! ”

“ Suddenly Shimei, the spell to break
He feared those simple, solemn, holy words
Again might cast upon the Sanhedrim.
The chance for heaven precarious is on earth
Ever, and now the heavenly chance was lost,
Such counter breath unable to withstand.
Those half-rapt souls reverted to themselves,
And brooked to listen—nay, assent gave they,
Even Saul too gave assent wrung out!—when, next,
"Stripes for his back!" sharply shrilled Shimei;
"Good forty stripes less one may save his soul! ”

“ What unknown voices when they begin to rise! Stand still, and everything is mute; take but a step, and all nature sighs. Night approaches; the shades thicken; you hear herds of wild beasts passing in the dark ”

“ I was three days ago basking myself in the morning sun, when I saw a rat running before me. I chased him. He fell into this well. I followed him, but instead of falling on the third storey where he is now lying, I fell into the second. It was on the same evening that the goldsmith also fell down into the fourth storey, and the tiger whom you released just before me fell down into the first. What I have to [17] tell you now is—do not relieve the goldsmith, though you may release the rat. As a rule, goldsmiths are never to be trusted. ”

“ 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." ”

“ But when at length the utterance of Ruth's thought
From converse passed into soliloquy
And the deep secret of her soul revealed,
Then Rachel caught a welcome gleam of hope.
A sign of grace she saw or seemed to see
At work for Ruth within her heart of grief,
Transmuting human sorrow to divine
Repentance, and for pain preparing peace.
"Let us go in together," Rachel said,
For they by this were nigh to Ruth's abode,
"Let us go in where we may be withdrawn
From note of such as here might mark our speech
Or action; I have word from him to thee." ”

“ Thus Julius, dallying, teased to wrath his scorn,
More threatening as in luxury of reserve
Suspended from the outbreak yet to fall.
The while the scornful Roman's wroth regard
Fixed as if caustic fangs upon the Jew,
The Jew, with stoic endurance, steeled himself
To take it without blenching. Full well felt
Through all his members was that branding look;
Though his eyes still were downward bent, as when
He dropped them to refuse Paul's sweet good will.
But suddenly now, he one first furtive glance
Lifting, as if unwillingly, to Paul,
Shimei takes on a violent change reverse. ”

“ There in marmoreal calm Gamaliel lay.
The simple presence of the living man,
In native majesty august with age,
Would have subdued who saw to reverence;
But the ennoblement and mystery
Of death, now added, wrought a mightier awe,
And almost breathless made the hush wherein
The chiliarch for the moment from the spell
Of Shimei's woven words was quite set free,
Seeing things true by his simplicity.
Breaking that hush, while never once his gaze
Unfixing from the features of the dead,
"Thou shouldst have told me this," said Lysias
To the centurion, gently chiding him. ”

“ But though we thus bring in doubt the work of Voltaire, both as to the purity of its motive and as to the value of its fruit, we should wrong our sense of justice to ourselves if we permitted our readers to suppose us blind to the generous things that this arch-infidel did on behalf of the suffering and the oppressed. Voltaire more than once wielded that pen of his, the most dreaded weapon in Europe, like a knight sworn to take on himself the championship of the forlornest of causes. ”

“ They observed him; they conversed with him not only on the sacraments but on automobiles and the use of pledge-envelopes; and as they felt the warmth of his handshake, as they heard the amiable bim-bom of his voice, saw his manly eyes, untroubled by doubts or scruples, and noted that he wore his morning clothes as well as any spiritual magnate among them, they greeted him and sought him out and recognized him as a future captain of the hosts of the Almighty.
Cleo’s graciousness added to his prestige. ”