As witness and accuser both to Paul; Yet sinister suspicion shadowing him, With information laid against, the while, As the ringleader in a plot of crime. The unhappy legate would at least detach Thus from his own leagued Jewish foes, the Jew, The one Jew, who, best knowing and hating him, With the least scruple the most genius joined To crowd him falling, to the farthest fall. Fairly the lading and unlading done, And all things ready, the good ship puts forth. The oarsmen sat in triple ranks that rose Tier above tier along the vessel's side; With cheer of voice that timed their rhythmic stroke, They, all together, many-handed, bent Over the supple oars, well-hung arow, And beat the waters into yeast and foam. The wieldy trireme answered to their will, And, past the towers and domes of Cæsarea, Along a windless way under the lee Of sea-walls fending from the bluff southwest, Pushed to the north beyond the harbor-mouth. Here the wind took her, freshening from behind, And, sail all set, they rested from the oar. Softly and swiftly, with such favoring gale, They prosper, and, along the storied coast Close cruising, soon discern the headland height, Mount Carmel, with his excellency crowned Of forest, and wide overlooking east The plain outrolled of great Esdraelon Washing with waves of green the mountain's feet-- Mountain whereon, in single-handed proof, Elijah those four hundred priests of Baal Gave to contempt; and, whence descending, he, Red with indignant wrath for his Lord God, By the brook Kishon slew them to His name. This Paul remembered, as he passed; and deemed He saw, hallowing the hills of Nazareth, A halo from the childhood of the Lord. From horn to horn across a crescent bay, Embosomed by its arc of shore that curved From Carmel round to Ptolemais north, Faring, they could, well inland gazing, catch A glimpse that vanished of the shapely cone Of Tabor soaring in his Syrian blue. Still onward, they next day the ancient seat Of famous Sidon in Phoenicia reached-- Long ruined now, with her twin city Tyre; Then, paired with her as mistress of the main, Sidon sat leaning on her promontory, Diffused along its northward-sliding slopes, Like a luxurious queen on her divan. Her sailors drove her keels to every haven, And fetched her home the spoil of every clime. To Farthest Thulé was the ocean wave White with her sails or spumy to her oars.