Paul fixed his gaze point-blank on Felix while These things he said, not as with personal aim-- Which might have been resented, being such, Resented, and thereby avoided quite-- Rather as if, through body, he beheld His hearer's soul, and set it with his eyes Far forward into the eternal world, And there saw the fierce flame he spoke of, fast Adhering or inhering, burn that soul, With burning unescapable by flight Or refuge through the universe of God. Paul's vision was so vivid that his eyes Imprinted what he saw upon the soul Of Felix, that almost he saw it too. He stared and listened, with that thought intense Wherewith sometimes the overmastering mind Will blind the eyesight and the hearing blur. A sense of insecurity in power, Bred in him by his consciousness of crime, With dread, too, of the moment, then perhaps Already nigh! when that omnipotence, That omnipresence, that omniscience, Rome's, Might beset _him_, to cut him off from hope-- This feeling blindly wrought the while beneath, Like struggling earthquake, to unsettle him; Thus weakened, half unconsciously, his will Fell childlike-helpless in the power of Paul. Now fear hath torment, and to Felix, prey Of fear with torment, Paul still added fear; Perhaps his fear intolerable grown Might save the sufferer from the thing he feared! Paul further said: "O Felix, Cæsar's sway Over this world, inevitable thus, Subduing all, is yet but image pale Of the supreme dominion absolute Which to Christ Jesus in the heaven belongs. The captives of the emperor need but wait Patient a while and sure release arrives; Since death at least, to all, or soon or late, Comes, one escape at last from Cæsar's power, Who owns no empire in that world beyond. But of that world beyond, no end, no bound, Whither we all must flee in fleeing hence, Still the Lord Christ abides eternal King; Death is but door to realm of His more wide. Here, the sheathed sword of His avenging ire Will sometimes touch, undrawn, with blunted edge, The wincing conscience of the wicked man That knows himself a criminal unjudged. Those touches are the mercy of the Lord That would betimes the guilty soul alarm; Those pains of conscience are the smouldering fires Which, quenched not now in sin-atoning blood, Will, blown to fury, by and by burst forth, And, fuelled of the substance of the soul, That cannot moult its immortality, One inextinguishable vengeance burn.