A helpless fixed fatuity of hate, A dull insistent prodding from despair, Robbed him of reason, while of cunning not: He could warp wisely toward an end unwise. Suspected by the Roman, by the Jew No longer trusted as of old--since seen, Those years at Cæsarea, changed and chilled So from his pristine ardor in pursuit Of Paul--Shimei saw nothing now before Him in the future but the nearing close In a blind alley, opening none beyond, Of the strait way wherein perforce he walked. One gleam of light, of possible light, ahead, He now descried. If Paul could somehow be Utterly cancelled from his case, no Paul Anywhere longer in the world, and if, Ah, if, O rapture! Paul could disappear Confessing guilt by seeming suicide-- That were the one deliverance left to hope, Hope if forlorn, at least, at least, a hope. Shimei his foot set softly in the snare. With slow and sly ambages of approach, He sounded if the soldier were of stuff To be in safety tampered with, and how. Close at his feet, but guarded from their touch By a low heap of cordage coiled between, There Stephen lay the while, a breathless corpse, And listened--with his body and his mind Both utterly all organ to attend-- As Shimei with that shifty cunning his, Insidious, like the entrance of disease, Wormed him into the bosom of his man, Instilling the temptation, sweet with bribe, To make away with his Jew prisoner. It would but give the wretch's wish effect-- So Shimei glozed with subtle speciousness-- Should now his gentle keeper intervene To end the endless waverings of a mind On self-destruction bent, a suicide Who only lacked the courage of despair, By tossing Paul headforemost overboard. Three points thereby were gained, and nothing lost: A criminal would meet his just desert, One fain to die his heart's desire obtain, And he, the soldier, no one wiser, take The profit, gold in hand, of a good deed. "Thou knowest," the tempter said, "the feel of gold, The weight," and therewith thrust some pieces broad Into the soldier's hand, the antepast And warrant of a ready rich reward. If question should arise involving him, Why, nothing easier than to say and swear, The prisoner, conscious of his guilt, and now Quite at the end of all his hopes by wile, Had used the favoring cover of the night To make a sudden spring into the brine. He, heedful of his duty and his charge, Had promptly put the utmost effort forth To seize him, and defeat the dire attempt. But desperation was too masterful In force and quickness, to be so forestalled. The fates and furies buoyed him overboard And plumped him to the bottom of the deep. Then, were his single witness held in doubt, Why, by good luck, here was a passenger