Meanwhile the angels in attendance there, Watching with eyes that see the invisible Things of the spirit of man within his breast, The posture and behavior of the mind, Had seen exhibited amidst that late Motionless multitude of souls suspense With supernatural awe, a spectacle Of consternation and precipitate flight To covert, such as sometimes is beheld In nature, when a mighty tempest lowers, And man, beast, bird, each conscious living thing, Shuddering, hies to hiding from the wrack. With wild inaudible outcry heard in heaven, That shattered congregation, soul by soul, Each soul its several way, fled, to find shroud From spiritual tempest hurtling on the head, Intolerably, hailstones and coals of fire. But one excepted spirit stood aloof, Scorning to join the fellowship of flight. Like a tall pine by whirlwind lonely left Upon his mountain, forest abject round, This man dared lift, though sole, a helmless brow Of stubborn hardihood to take the storm. Others, dismayed, might flee to refuge; Saul, Not undismayed, fronted the wrath of God. Shimei alone there neither stood nor fell; By habit grovelling, on his belly prone, Already prostrate he had thither come. Incapable of awe from good inspired, He, abject, but without humility, Ever, by force of reptile nature, crawled; And now had crawled, as, dusty demon's-heart And vitreous eye of basilisk, he still-- With equal, though with different, enmity, Devising death for Stephen in his mind, And studying slow prolonged revenge for Saul-- Watched all, whatever chanced to either there; But most, malignantly delighted, watched Deepen the settled shadow on Saul's face Cast from the darkness of his inner mood. BOOK V. SAUL AND SHIMEI. Saul, sullen, gloomy, and chagrined, over his discomfiture recently experienced, is visited, in his self-imposed seclusion at home, by Shimei, who, always by nature antipathetic to Saul, hates him virulently now for the affront from him received publicly in the late council. Shimei exasperates Saul with sneering, pretended sympathy for him over his defeat at Stephen's hands; at the same time disclosing the plot he has himself concocted, involving subornation of perjury, with alleged connivance on the part of the Sanhedrim in general, for the stoning of Stephen. Shimei gone, Saul, in the open court of his dwelling, sits solitary, brooding in the depths of dejection over the fallen state of his fortunes. SAUL AND SHIMEI.