"You see I hardly slept myself this night, Thinking of you, and pleasuring my mind With fancies of the odd coincidences That might be happening you at Bethany. I got prompt information how it all Fell out, and hastened hither to advise With you. Upon your sleep, already much Cut short, I would not thoughtlessly break in, And so I dropped me at your threshold here, To wait a proper hour for seeing you, And yet not let you pass out hence unseen. I must have fallen asleep, and, brother Saul Be sure I was no less surprised than you, When you just now came on me unaware. Ha! ha! How naturally you mistook your friend For something not so pleasant from the pit Vomited suddenly up under your feet! Another might have taken it amiss To be so little courteously greeted, But I--why, give and take, say I, in joke, You have bravely evened up the score between us!" "I do not bandy jokes with such as you, Suborner of false witnesses!" gnashed Saul. Saul's look, his tone, had withered any man Save Shimei, who grew blithe in sultry heats Of human scorn as in his element. So Shimei flourished lustier hearing Saul Despise him with the question further asked: "What is there common between you and me?" "Oh! Ah!" sneered Shimei; "I had thought you dazed In eyesight only, but distempered mind You show now, taking this high strain with me. 'What common 'twixt us?' Yea, yea, very good! 'Suborner of false witnesses'--hence base, Shimei, but very, very virtuous, Saul, Who, with much flourish of disdain, his hands, His lily hands, washes, for all to see, Quite white and fair of all complicity With 'lies,' 'devilish lies,' 'lies damnable,' You know, and so forth, and in due course then, His moral indignation unabated, Takes profit of said lies to make away With Stephen, through more weighty argument In stones found than conveniently to hand Came when he crossed words with that heretic!"