But Paul, no pause, immitigably said: "Belshazzar, Babylonian king of old, Once in a season of high festival Held in his palace with a thousand lords, Saw visionary fingers of a hand Come out upon the palace walls and write. Then that king's countenance was changed in him, In answer to the trouble of his thoughts; The very jointings of his loins were loosed, And his knees, shaken, on each other smote. In language that he did not understand, But prophet Daniel told the sense to him, Belshazzar had his own swift ruin read. Thus, O lord Felix, in our hours of feast, Oft, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN, Dread warning to us that the end is come, That we have been full proved and wanting found, That now our vantage must another's be-- Appalling words of final doom from God, In lurid letters live along the walls Of the soul's pleasure-house--for who will heed! Remorses, doubts, recoils, forebodings, fears, And fearful lookings for of judgment nigh, Previsions flashed on the prophetic soul Refusing to be hooded not to see-- These are handwritings on the wall from God; They, syllabling the sentence of His ire, Spell MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN, For pleasure-lovers lost in lust and pride. Well for Belshazzar, if betimes he heed!" Had Felix been alone, deep in the dark, And a wide waste of solitude around, A comfort it had seemed to him to loose One mighty agitation of his frame And shiver his blood-curdling terror off; Or, in one wanton, wild, voluptuous cry, Shriek it into the startled universe. But, seated there upon his throne of power, Drusilla by his side regarding him, To tremble, like a culprit being judged, Before a culprit waiting judgment! He, With last resistant agony of will, Kept moveless his blanched lips, and on his seat Sat stricken upright, and so stared at Paul.