THE LEGEND OF SAINT THECLA.
ARGUMENT.
Saint Paul preaches Christ at Iconium, standing on a stone
where many ways meet; and Thecla, a noble virgin, sees him
not, but hears his discourse daily for three days, standing at a
window. She believes gladly; and hearing that the Apostle
has been scourged and commanded to depart from that city,
she desires of him two things, namely, baptism at his hand,
and admission among them who minister to him. St. Paul
baptizes her, but denies her second request, announcing that
God has reserved for her a higher task. Thecla is sentenced to
be thrown to wild beasts, but is saved from death. She journeys
southward to Mount Taurus; and there, being led by the Holy
Spirit into all knowledge, she preaches to the shepherd race,
and after many years brings them into the obedience of Christ.
Her task fulfilled, she departs to Seleucia on the sea; and she
is named ‘The eldest daughter of Saint Paul.’ In Seleucia
she dies; and to this day a singular honour is accorded to her
at Christian death-beds.
When holy Paul westward had made his way
From Antioch to Iconium, he abode
With Onesiphorus, preaching day by day
In market-place, or on the common road,
Or standing on a stone, with feet firm-set,
Where four long streets, by plantains bordered, met.
It chanced that in a house that stone hard by
There dwelt a damsel, Thecla, young and fair,
Dear to the poor for heart and lineage high,
Dear to the rich, for she was richest there:
And so for her great riches and sweet face
Iconium's proudest sons besought her grace.
Thecla was not to marriage rites inclined,
For from her childhood she had treasured still
The dream of some Deliverer, conquering, kind,
Courteous in word, resistless in his will,
In act heroic, and august in thought,
Yet nought had seen like that her fancy wrought.
To festal games that maid would seldom go,
Never to fanes where pagan dance and song
Surprised with painful blush a cheek of snow
And did to heathen rites themselves a wrong:
Her more it pleased in fragrant glades to roam
Than sit at Circus or at Hippodrome.
Alone beside that poplar-girded lake,
Iconium's mirror-bath, she paced at noon;
At eve o'er rocky heights her path would take,
And watch far flashes from the ascended moon
Like sea-gleams glimmering from a sea-bird's wings,
Illume remoter Halys' mountain springs.
With laughing girls alone she twined the dance
Where leaned the green reed 'gainst the silvered rill:
There, if wild youths in frolic or by chance
Broke on them, through the thickets green and still
They fled, far scattered like the pearls that gem
When the cord bursts, some queenly diadem.
Of all the Olympian choir she loved but one,
The Queen of Night, and ofttimes frowned, aggrieved
At that strange legend of Endymion:
At most its merest outline she believed;
‘The boy was good: she kissed him as he slept;
Then passed: he woke; found no one near, and wept.’
A youth with manors broad but ill of life,
In part his wasted fortunes to repair,
In part from love this fair one sought for wife:
Urgent and loud her parents propp'd his prayer:
‘Iconium's best has proffered you his hand:’
Her ‘no’ meant that they could not understand.
They pressed her oft: weariness too can jest:—
One eve as Dian's brow, through cloud descried,
Nigh setting cast a faint beam from the West
That tinged not lit the wan lake's shallows wide,
Laughing she spake: ‘Let Dian make a sign:
Its import I—none better—can divine.
‘I note long since all meanings of her face;
Have seen her startled as the roe that flies;
Beheld her bend the chalice of her grace
O'er harvest slopes; marked her reluctant rise
Like some poor maid ere noontide to be wed;
Have watched her weep like mourners o'er the dead.
‘On a silk scarf blue as her midnight heaven
My hands those lily flowers she loves shall braid:
My patron she: to her it shall be given
When crescent next. If, rising o'er yon glade,
Her brows distempered lour, or softly shine,
I shall know well, and make her answer mine.’
Her father laughed:—‘To Dian make your vows!
Good choice! Your Dian's placable as fair!
She loves true maids; when true maid turns to spouse
Scorns not, more late, the young mother's frightened prayer,
Lucina then. Work hard! Next week we spend,
I and your mother, with our Phrygian friend.’
With wrinkling brows much labouring to look wise
Again he laughed, admiring his own wit:
Thecla laughed too, lifting on his her eyes
Albeit his meaning she discerned no whit:
Her mother smiled; ‘Work, Thecla! Work—and think!’
She nodded; and her eyes began to blink.
At morn while sat the maid with flower-like hand
Braiding white flowers into that mantle blue,
She heard, without, a voice of high command:
Close to the casement scarf in hand she drew:
She sat no more: there hung she hour by hour
Listening: that kingly voice still swelled in power.
Forward full oft she bent, yet nought could see
Save wandering crowds clustered with eyes fast fixed
On him who spake—to her invisibly.
Not far he stood; but him and her betwixt
A low-roofed fane there rose. The hours rushed by:
Around her feet that scarf lay movelessly.
But though she saw not him, before her passed
The things whereof he spake, by power benign
Within her phantasy immaculate glassed
As in nocturnal seas each starry sign:
Single her eye; her heart was without flaw:
Through strength of faith the things she heard, she saw.
She saw the angel of the Annunciation;
She saw that Maid who, startled by his word,
To that all strange yet heavenly Salutation
Replied, ‘Behold the Handmaid of the Lord.’
She saw that light which clothed her as the sun
Then when she spake the words, ‘Thy will be done.’
She saw her o'er that hilly region wending;
Saw her beside her time-worn cousin's door;
She saw the Bethlehem star, the Magians bending
Their splendour-smitten heads that Babe before:
She saw that Mother tremble; then, restored,
Meet with calm front Simeon's predicted sword.
She saw that mount whence He, the Son of Man,
Launched o'er the earth His new Beatitudes
Like Seraphs winged; nor less with flail and fan
Lashed back to demon-haunted solitudes
Those glittering Woes, blessings by this world held,
That kept mankind so long in blindness spelled.
She saw that Garden of Gethsemane;
She saw God's angel hold the chalice forth
High in both hands; she saw those sleepers three;
Saw One Who knelt with forehead nigh the earth;
With aching heart she saw, the branches through,
Those sacred blood-drops reddening grass and dew.
And ever as those sequent pictures rose
And to her spirit's vision clave and clung,
She heard, like torrent flood that seaward flows
Through black ravines the cloud-girt woods among,
Still heard that wondrous voice of him, the unseen,
Which told of what must be, and what had been.
It changed. She saw the hosts of the Forgiven
That Conqueror entering Hades, rise to greet Him:
From all the multitudinous gates of heaven
She saw the Sons of God ride forth to meet Him:
She saw the God-Man take the eternal Throne
Cinctured by shining armies of His own.
The great voice ceased: the twilight came: the night:
Still by that casement stood that listening maid:
The gloom but freshened with a keener light
Those pictures in her amorous bosom stayed,
Amorous of Truth; the stillness all night long
Made that strong voice more spiritually strong.
That night, as on her pillow sank her head,
The moon, betwixt a cedar and a palm
Ascending, bathed in light the virgin's bed:
That light she marked not: glad she lay and calm:
The sun of Faith full-orbed upon her shone:
The moon-cast fancies from her soul were gone.
So passed three days; daily the Apostle preached;
Daily those silent throngs looked up in awe
Their cheeks now flushed with joy, now conscience-bleached;
Not once that preacher's face the listener saw;
Wished not for more: ‘Faith comes by hearing;’ she
Had Faith, nor cared with bodily eye to see.
On the fourth morn was silence. Strange it seemed,
Strange, but not sad. She stood in silent prayer,
Palm joined to palm. With glorious memories teemed
Her heart full-fed: God, like a river, there
O'erflowed her being: Knowledge, not won from sense,
Knowledge infused, filled her intelligence.
Those Truths which from the unseen one she had heard
Not barren in her spirit, but fruitful lay;
They spread like growths sun-quickened and wind-stirred
That sow their seeds till blows the breath of May
And woodland lawns compact of violets lie,
Celestial spaces of an under-sky.
Daily she grew in wisdom and in vision;
Daily in heart she gloried and rejoiced:
Then in the midst of all that soul-fruition
Sudden there fell a change. Two slaves low-voiced
Conversed; ‘They spared his life, but scourged; next morn
They drive him from Iconium forth with scorn.’
The other; ‘Nay, that prophet 'scaped right well,
For many a man seduced he to his Faith;
Of these not few in terror from it fell
When to the præfect dragged: so rumour saith.’
They passed: then Thecla took her veil, and spread
Its dusky tissue twice o'er face and head.
She passed that pagan temple close at hand:
Those meeting ways beyond baffled her eye:
A beggar craved her alms: she made demand
Where dwelt that prophet: he replied; ‘Close by
With Onesiphorus.’ There she found him sitting
On the stone threshold, nets for fishers knitting.
'Twas not her childhood's dream: yet all was well,
For on his brow greatness was written plain:
Before him on her knees the maiden fell,
Then spake; ‘My boldness I might well arraign
But I have heard thy word; and I believe;
And baptism at thy hand would fain receive.
‘I crave a second boon: this city blind
Spurns thee; and forth thou far'st again wayworn:
To me unworthy be a place assigned
'Mong those by whom thy burdens still are borne.
If women tend thee, let me share their joy:
If men, I too can serve, in garb a boy.’
The Apostle fixed on her that beaming eye
Which neither years nor sufferings could subdue:
‘Child! In your face a destiny I descry:
God hath a nobler, sweeter task for you.
What seek you, seeking Christ? You seek His cross!
First bear, then preach it: all beside is dross.’
Baptized, her heart with joy within her burned:
Winged by that joy she sought her home, and found
Her mother, Theodora, late returned
Her six days' absence ended. On the ground
Still lay that scarf. One lily flower, but one,
And that unfinished, 'gainst the purple shone.
With reddening brow her mother thus began;
‘You sent me missive none: excuse I made:
“On Dian's scarf”—'twas thus my fancy ran—
“Doubtless she toils: her duteous fingers braid
All round that votive mantle bud and flower!”
You flung your bauble from you in an hour.
‘No doubt your Dian hid her head in cloud:
No doubt some amorous trickster spake you fair:
Thamyras may have heard of this: he's proud:
I seek his house the mischief to repair:
I never said the man was wise or true:
I said he's rich, and good enough for you.’
The storm subsided: Thecla by her kneeling
Humbly yet proudly told her mother all:
That three days' preaching; all its power heart-healing
And spirit-strengthening: next she spake of Paul;
Her baptism, and her vow to cast aside
All things for Christ, His handmaid and His bride.
The storm burst forth: upon her daughter's head,
Pacing that floor a wildered shape and wild,
She hurled her curse: next to Thamyras sped:
Denounced that daughter's crime. The young man smiled:
‘These be girls' tricks! I come to-morrow morn:
You'll see your convert laughingly forsworn.’
He came. As those who knowing well the face
Forget all else, thus wondering sat the maid
Thamyras entering; with her wonted grace
Then gave him welcome, and his pardon prayed.
Her thoughts had tracked bright regions: men like him
To her were ‘men like trees’—poor shadows dim.
He urged her first with banter, then with pleas
Such as the emptiest head can quickliest find:
The Christian new replied as one that sees
To colour-lectures from the man born blind:
A lover's supplications next he tried:
She answered, ‘Christ I love; seek nought beside.’
With baleful smile the vanquished man departed:
His love, self-love disguised, had changed to hate;
A specious man, yet base and evil-hearted:
Ere long he reached a soldier-guarded gate:
Three times he paused; but deep within him sin
That day held carnival: he entered in.
It was Iconium's chiefest Basilic:
Beyond a pillared nave there hung an arch,
Poised upon porphyry columns dusk and thick:
Beneath its span a bannered host could march:
Ranged round the apse Iconium's judges sate
Down-gazing, dark as death, and fixed as fate.
Thamyras spake; ‘Judges, to this high hall
Hourly, I note, your lictors with their rods
Hale wretches starved whom late the Apostate, Paul,
Once Jew, seduced to scoff the Roman Gods;
Shall nobles 'scape, where slaves unlettered bleed?
Thecla is Galilean, rite and creed.’
Gladly those judges would have closed their ears,
Devised some cause for doubt or for delay:
They dared not: round them circled scoffs and sneers;
Soon, like sea-thunders in some cliff-girt bay,
Uprose the popular tumult, and the cry,
‘If Thecla be a Christian let her die!’
That crowd gave way: before them Thecla stood;
Beauteous and basking like a rose new blown.
She smiled on that tumultuous multitude:
Majestical as queen upon her throne
She spake at last; glorying, her Christ confessed;
Bade all who heard adore Him and be blessed.
The judgment followed;—‘To the Lions!’ She
Received that sentence with a quiet smile:
Once more in storm that people's mad decree
Rolled forth. Not scared, yet sad, she stood awhile;
Still on her lip that smile all golden hung;
‘Thou wilt not blame them, Lord; they mean no wrong.’
The noble tale could scarce more fitly end
Than here; for what are miracles extern
Compared with gifts interior that descend
From God on hearts like hers for Him that yearn?
Not less to Christ's last gift humbly we cleave;
‘These signs shall follow them, my followers, that believe.’
Such signs were oft vouchsafed: the old books aver
That when upon the arena Thecla stood
Within Iconium's amphitheatre,
The imprisoned beasts beneath ravening for blood,
That lion loosed to rend her dared not meet
The martyr's eye. He cowered and licked her feet.
A second bounded on that stage: the first
Fought, her defender; each by each was slain:
The maid betwixt them stood. That crew accursed
Devised for her new torments, but in vain,
The sword, the pyre. Full many a death she died
In will, not deed: God's shield their rage defied.
Then rose Iconium's sons, and thus they said;
‘She must not die! Perchance this maid is dear
To Gods Iconium knows not, and, when dead,
May draw on us their vengeance. Let her steer
Her little wanton bark what way she will:
The girl's a fool: we meant to fright, not kill.’
Next morn they pushed her from their gateway forth:
Southward huge Taurus heaved his range of snows;
Rose-red Lycanus slanted t'ward the north:
The loftier heights, the austerer path, she chose,
And heard next day from Taurian peaks that pæan
Anthemed in thunder from the waves Ægean.
There Thecla made her mountain hermitage;
There lived in ecstasies of praise and prayer,
Blithe as a bird that 'scapes its gilded cage
And houses in green forests. Everywhere
She saw Creation's God, the All-Good, the All-Wise;
Saw Him forth-gazing from that Saviour's eyes.
She unamazed could mark the snowy ridges,
The noontide cloud that o'er them swam or slept,
The rainbow torrent dashed o'er icy ledges,
The mist that o'er the sighing pinewoods crept:—
These were beginnings: Thecla with one bound
Passed such things by, and sat with contemplation crowned.
Total Creation seemed the robe of Him
The great Creator; and its every fold
Revealed to her, though but in outline dim,
The God beneath. In faith she laid her hold
Upon ‘His garment's hem;’ and evermore
Virtue divine welled thence her being o'er.
Fair were those peopled vales: in them she dwelt
As Eremite 'mid Lybian sands, alone:
She lived in God, and all the earth, she felt;
Formed but one marble footstep for His throne:
Yet flower-like was her heart, sweetness sans sin—
It was God's Eden; yea, He walked therein.
To her close by shone out the things remote:
For that cause holier seemed the things close by:
Them too the eternal light of Duty smote:
All service service seemed of One on high:
Worldlings though seeking God, sleep oft, oft faint:
No man is wholly Theist save the Saint.
No other wholly loves his kind: she dipped
The blind man's pitcher in the darkling wave:
She cheered the sick-room chill: the vines she clipped
That made its casement gloomy as the grave:
She stayed the widow's tears: from unknown skies
She flashed new light into the orphan's eyes.
What wonder if the mountain shepherds deemed
That guest well worthy hymn and incense rite?
Dian herself, their grateful fancy dreamed,
For their wild dells had left her Latmian height!
She preached a greater; else their zeal had crowned
That maid the Queen of all their mountain bound.
The little rock-built mountain villages
Raised, each, its banner, near them as she drew;
Children, aye babes, with unashamed caress
Welcomed her: that she loved them well they knew:
She looked so like the tidings that she preached,
With spring's delight the old man's heart they reached.
Polemic proof, when boastfullest, proves unstable,
Powerless for God-like action, prompt for strife:
Music lives on, a power irrefutable:
Religion sets to music mortal life.
Still to His Church, bleeding yet unenslaved,
‘God added daily such as should be saved.’
The days went by, and ever year by year
She spread abroad the Name Divine and Mary's,
The blithesomest of Christ's hermit saints austere,
The tenderest of His Church's missionaries:
At last to God that mountain land was won:
At last Saint Paul's predicted ‘task’ was done.
Then came to her a longing for the ocean
Whose harmonies the night winds oft had brought her:
She sought Seleucia; there with strange emotion
Paced day by day beside the blue, green water
Wherein the Infinite best is typified:
There happy she abode two years; then died;
Seleucia of Cilicia. Farther East
Cilician Tarsus, ‘no mean city,’ stands,
Where he self-styled ‘of all the Apostles least’
Was born, and lived by labour of his hands.
T'ward it each eve had Thecla gazed; and all
Named her ‘the eldest daughter of Saint Paul.’
Later men gave the maid a name more holy,
‘The Proto-martyr of the woman-race;’
And o'er her sea-lulled grave, humble and lowly,
A wearied man new-touched by childhood's grace,
The Emperor of the East, Justinian, reared,
Five centuries passed, a fane by all revered.
Likewise God's Church, which evermore condoles
With mortal pangs, in that supremest prayer
‘The Commendation of Departing Souls,’
To her concedes a praise none others share:
In that last prayer Thecla hath part: in it
No name beside but names of Holy Writ.
‘Go forth, O Christian Soul, in the name of Him
The Father, and the Son, and Holy Spirit,
In the name of Cherubim and Seraphim,
And Saints of earth that heavenly thrones inherit:
God give thee, Christian Soul, a good release:
God in His Sion stablish thee in peace.
‘Deliver him, God, as Thou, in days of yore,
Deliver'dst Noah, Job, and Abraham,
And Paul and Peter from their anguish sore,
As Thou deliver'dst Thecla, that sweet name,
From beasts and tyrants' rage, and demon snare;
Save him, Thou Saviour: Judge all-righteous, spare.’
