A stir of expectation broke the hush Of that strange silence, ere his opening words: "That I, the youngest of this order, thus Should rise for speech--and that beloved gray head Before me bowed, unready yet--might seem Unseemly. But to speak after he speaks, My own reveréd guide, the guide of all, Would be, should I then speak to differ, more Unseemly still. And what I have to say, Being my thought, burns in me to be said, Approve, condemn, who will; God bids me speak." Gamaliel raised his head and looked at Saul. Saul felt the look, and hardened his will, but not His heart, to meet it. Turning so, he saw, Not what he inly braced himself to bear, Warning, rebuke, anger to overawe, Reproach, appeal, dissuasion, pain confessed At filial separation, grasp of will At old authority elapsed--of these, Naught; only a pathos of perplexity, A broken, anguished, groping childlikeness, Desire of any help, and hope of none-- Saul will hereafter understand it all; He simply marks it now compassionately In wonder, pausing not, and thus, with loth Allusion to the last advice, proceeds: "But other speech my lips refuse, until I purge my conscience by protesting here, For me, I spurn, scorn, hate, loathe utterly The devil and devilish lies. I have no qualms At blood, but I love truth, and qualms I own At falsehood, practised in whatever name; Damnable ever, then thrice damnable, Damning a holy cause it feigns to serve!" A flush of warm revival in the breasts Of some that listened answered to such words. But one there was, that vile adviser, felt A gripe of mortal hatred at his heart. He, by Gamaliel's eye not unobserved, Behind a black malignant scowl which, like That murk emission of the cuttle-fish, Flushed from his heart his face to overspread And hide his thought, sat fostering the wound Of Saul's disdainful noble words--a wound To rankle long in the obscene recess Of that bad bosom, and therein to breed At last an issue foul of fell revenge; In purpose fell, though in fulfilment foiled. But Saul, magnanimously heedless, deigned Nor glance at him nor thought of consequence. Elate with the elixir of his youth, And buoyed with confidence exultant now By the rebound of his beginning, buoyed Besides with sympathy, he passed along, Yet, master he, not mastered, of his mood, Curbed strongly his strong passion and delight Of power, and, calm with self-possessing will, Force in him to have sped a thunderbolt Stayed back from sudden waste, to be sent on In fine diffusive throb--as farther thus: "Enough of that; I did but purify My soul with words. I feared some inward stain From only listening, if I listened only, And did not speak, when base was proffered me.