Gamaliel listened deeply, with shut eyes; He listened, and kept silence, and then sighed, A long, considerate sigh, and unresolved. His struggling reason could not right itself; It staggered like a vessel in the sea That cuff and buffet of the storm has left A hulk, dismasted, rudderless, forlorn, Wedged between waves rocking her to and fro, And threatening to engulf her in the deep; So there Gamaliel swayed, with surge on surge Of thought and passion sweeping over him, Till now he trembled on the point to sink. Paul saw the old man's state, and, pitying him, Knew how to shed a balm upon the waves. With a low voice, daughter of silence, he Slowly intoned a soft, melodious psalm: "'Not haughty is my heart, O God the Lord, Nor do mine eyes ambitiously aspire; In great affairs I exercise me not, And not in things too wonderful for me. Yea, I have stilled and quieted my soul; As with its mother a new-weanéd child, So is my soul a weanéd child with me. O Israel, hope thou, in Jehovah hope, From this time forth and even forevermore!'" The mood, all melting, of that monody-- Less monody, than sound of sobbing ceased-- Its cradling gentle lullaby to pride, Went, subtly permeant, through Gamaliel's soul, And mastered it to sympathy of calm. Paul saw with pleasure this effect, and wished The too much shaken old man venerable Might taste the soothing medicine of sleep. Not pausing, he, with ever softer tone Verging toward silence, over and over again Crooned like a cradle melody that psalm; Till, as that vexing spirit in Saul the king Once yielded to young David's harping, so Now even the fluttering of the aged flesh Owned a strange power reverse to cancel it, Hid in the vibrant pulsing of Paul's voice, Its flexures and its cadences, that matched The meaning with the music; lulled to rest, Gamaliel lightly, like an infant, slept. "Hist! Haste!" So Paul to Stephen signed and said; "Hence, and bring hither quickly bread and wine, Wherewith to cheer Gamaliel when he wakes; He sleeps now, weary with unwonted thought."