A walk has calmed me--I begin again-- Letting this last page, since it is written, stand. Lucius is going: you will see him soon In our great Forum, there with him will walk, And hear him rail and rave against the East. I stay behind--for these bare silences, These hills that in the sunset melt and burn, This proud stern people, these dead seas and lakes, These sombre cedars, this intense still sky, To me, o'erwearied with life's din and strain, Are grateful as the solemn blank of night After the fierce day's irritant excess; Besides, a deep absorbing interest Detains me here, fills up my mind, and sways My inmost thoughts--has got, as 'twere a gripe Upon my very life, as strange as new. I scarcely know how well to speak of this, Fearing your raillery at best--at worst Even your contempt; yet, spite of all, I speak. First, do not deem me to have lost my head, Sunstruck, as that man Paulus was at Rome. No, I am sane as ever, and my pulse Beats even, with no fever in my blood. And yet I half incline to think his words, Wild as they were, were not entirely wild. Nay, shall I dare avow it? I half tend, Here in this place, surrounded by these men-- Despite the jeering natural at first, And then the pressure of my life-long thought Trained up against it--to excuse his faith, And half admit the Christus he thinks God Is, at the least, a most mysterious man. Bear with me if I now avow so much: When next we meet I will expose my mind, But now the subject I must scarcely touch. How many a time, while sauntering up and down The Forum's space, or pausing 'neath the shade Of some grand temple, arch, or portico, Have we discussed some knotty point of law, Some curious case, whose contradicting facts Looked Janus-faced to innocence and guilt. I see you now arresting me, to note With quiet fervor and uplifted hand Some subtle view or fact by me o'erlooked, And urging me, who always strain my point (Being too much, I know, a partisan), To pause, and press not to the issue so, But more apart, with less impetuous zeal, Survey as from an upper floor the facts. I need you now to rein me in, too quick To ride a whim beyond the term of Truth, For here a case comes up to which in vain I seek a clue: you could clear up my mind, But you are absent--so I send these notes. The case is of one Judas, Simon's son, Iscariot called--a Jew--and one of those Who followed Christus, held by some a god, But deemed by others to have preached and taught A superstition vile, of which one point Was worship of an ass; but this is false! Judas, his follower, all the sect declare, Bought by a bribe of thirty silver coins, Basely betrayed his master unto death. The question is--Did Judas, doing this, Act from base motives and commit a crime? Or, all things taken carefully in view, Can he be justified in what he did?