As if his speech were half soliloquy, The youth let lapse his musing into mute, Which not with word or sign would Paul invade. Almost with admiration, with such joy Of hope for Stephen, Paul remarked in him The noble gains of knowledge he had made-- Wisdom say rather out of knowledge won-- In those two years at Cæsarea spent; Years for the youth so rich in fruitful chance Of converse with his elders, and of thought Which in that quick young mind, for brooding apt No less than apt for action, brought to full Sweet ripeness all that he from other learned, And touched it with a quality his own. Paul could not but in measure feel himself Given back to him reflected in the words That he just now had heard from Stephen's lips; Yet he therein felt too a surge of youth And youth's unrest and eagerness and strife And dauntless heart to assay the impossible Which were all Stephen's. And he held his peace. Presently Stephen took up voice again: "Almost I thus resolve myself one doubt, One question, that I thought to bring to thee. God is not altogether such, I know, As we are; yet are we too somewhat such As He, for in God's image were we made. And we perforce must know God, if at all, Then by ourselves as patterned after Him. So I suppose our best similitude For what God feels--but 'feeling,' also that!-- How fast do these anthropomorphic walls Enclose us still in all our thought of God!-- 'Feeling' is but a parable flung forth By us, bridge-builders on the hither side, To tremble out a little way toward God, Then flutter helpless down in the abyss, The impassable abyss, of difference Between created and Creator, us And Him, the finite and the Infinite! Forgive me, but I lose my way in words!" And again Stephen broke his utterance off, Faltering; like one who fording a full stream Now in midcurrent finds his foothold fail, And cannot in such deepened waters walk.