Saul listened with illimitable scorn; And scorn incensed his rage thus crossed to be, Hopelessly crossed, by crass perversity. In rage and scorn, he scourged those men with words: "There is no reasoning with minds like you!-- Too ignorant to guess how ignorant Ye are, and self-conceited in degree To match. Such ignorance, with self-conceit Such, renders blind indeed. What boots it I Should tell you superstition clouds your brain? Your superstition would not let you hear. Your very senses, given by God to be The avenues of knowledge to your mind, Satan has clogged to truth, and made of them But open thoroughfares for lies from him To enter by and capture you his own. Mere Satan's lies those tales are that ye tell, Of prison-doors thrown wide mysteriously To let these men go free, and of deaths dealt By magic sentence weaponless from them-- Mere Satan's lies those tales, or, were they true, Yet tokens only of Satanic power And craft permitted to disport them here For their destruction who to be destroyed Prove themselves greedy by such act as yours. Dupes of the devil, go, I pity you! This is your weakness, not your villainy. I thought to make you helpers in my strife To save the souls of others, but your souls Themselves need saving first and most of all-- If souls like yours of saving worthy be, Or capable! Some different make of men From you, seems I must seek, to serve my need. Yet you I thank at least for this, that ye By your behavior show me what a sore, How seated, and how wide, into the heart Eats of my nation! Lo, I take the cup, The full, the overflowing cup of shame Which ye this day wring out for me, that cup Take I with thanks from you, and to the dregs Drain it, in pledge, in pledge and sacrament, That I hereafter give myself more whole, More absolute, more consecrate, to one, One only, pure endeavor and desire, The utter rooting out--at cost how dear, No reckoning, mine or other's, toil, and tears, And blood--wherever Jewish name be found, Of this foul creeping rot and leprosy, This blight, this blast, this mildew, on our fame!" Saul, in the light of luminous wrath, foresaw Nigh, and saluted, that career, which thence, After Judæan cities overrun With havoc at his hand to Jesus' name, Will bear him ravening on Damascus road! BOOK XIII. SAUL AND SERGIUS.