He of the Commanding Hand!

Is it a generous, forbearing emotion peering forth in utmost modesty and shyness, or an overpowering, virginal confession which native literary refinement whispers, as a secret care, into the ear of one grown delicate of feeling and humble of spirit?!

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I came to know you, O my refiner, and everything in you drove new life into the folds of my soul!

And I busied myself searching out your world... how might I find a sickle of the spirit to cleave your hardness?

And there appeared to me in you those opposing, contradictory traits, strange in their harshness and their gentleness — the ones that carry you far into hurting, so that you pain and torment, and then you stand in sympathy with a thousand sorrows, saying with rare nobility: "Would that upon my shoulder the cares might be borne."

I used to imagine that your melancholy held the desolation of the deserts and the sorrows of autumn, and my bewilderment at you grew, O you domineering conqueror! How did pain never touch your steadfastness? How did melancholy bring you nothing but greater balance? And how were you able to take possession of the world with your heart, in a poetic union and in a lavish giving of self to every suffering, wretched, sorrowing soul?

Was it for your sake that ardent longing gnawed at me and grief burst forth from me, day after day?

Why was it that whenever I heard you speak, my reverence was stirred? And why did I permit myself, in illusion and vanity, to imagine that in each of us was what the other held of feelings and thoughts? But the thoughts in you were awake and articulate, until it seemed that each single sentence had been fashioned to drive me to amazement at your skill in setting before me, in difficult words, the movement of the gentle soul and the course of the blazing mind!

What was this thing that made me pity those who did not know you, as though the splendor embodied in your person were something so captivating that it could never be repeated in another, until I came to think that ignorance of you was poverty and bondage... Was it that quickness of wit that made you, in my eyes, supreme and unique? Or was it nothing beside your rare imagination and your wondrous brilliance?!

Why did my soul come to delight in humbling itself before that proud one who was so refined in shunning the places of disgrace, who saved me from the yoke of sloth, and taught me to seek eminence in the shadow of strength and steadfastness, so that I wiped away my tears and repeated to myself in secret: "The blow that does not kill is a spur to strength and life."

With you I was in a refuge that sheltered me and guarded me and spread over my purity an angelic wing; and you would breathe awe into my spirit, and fill me with a sense of my own smallness before your polished eloquence and your precise thought! So I would become a beseeching hope, praying that one day I might come to possess what you possess of native genius and intelligence of heart.

And I would take refuge in my powers of mind, imploring them to make me appear before you as something of consequence; but my entreaty only scattered me further, and the scattering only filled me with torment, so that I was like one undergoing a cruel trial and a bitter test.

Why was it that when I listened to you, thoughts pulled me apart and flocks of feelings swept over me in succession, until I became spoil divided among every fear and every tenderness, every shrinking and every sympathy; and when I tried to survey my own self, a small soul surged within me, over which emotion and ease preened themselves, while a hidden ferment filled my innermost stirrings, from whose faint confession I stole that one repeated refrain: "Great are you in your mercy, and great, great in your injustice!"

What was this thing that compelled me to exalt in you the gifts and the virtues, and to invent for your slight faults an interpretation that only one who reads matters by the lights of his own heart could reach!

And why did you draw from your meanings only what was newly minted, seizing my attention, awakening in my inclination a readiness for study and a devotion to knowledge, so that I longed to attain your clarity of mind, with that strange suppleness of yours in overleaping the stumbling-blocks of dullness and faltering.

Nay, why did there arise in me that importunity which begs the Divine Power and implores it to shower upon me splendid gifts! And to adorn me with a miraculous leap in which my confusion and helplessness would crumble away, with all the dullness and slowness under which I labor in keeping pace with your skillful play of thought.

Each of your days had a rhythm all its own, which changed the landmarks of my life and gave my thought a wing and my soul a tongue; and whenever I return to you in my imagination, I return to an eagle-spirit that crossed my horizons, breathed pride into me, and taught me to kneel in austerity toward the wellspring of every noble feeling and every great thought. No wonder, then, if I felt that I was small before you, and that you had monopolized such kinds of power and excellence as drove me to glean from you every knowledge, that I might call on your intelligence to help polish my soul and make it grow.

Your speech was a blend of the tone of military command and the meekness of a great soul; and you were visited by that slight melancholy which added to your gravity and dignity, and hinted at all you had absorbed of life's deposits and secrets; so that when I set myself beside you I seemed no more than an artless child, whose admiration was awakened by your arraying yourself in everything strange and captivating!

Did you know how I came to wrestle with the weakness and faintheartedness that roamed in my spirit, trying to resemble you and to model myself on your pattern? Or do you know that I found in you the mighty, commanding hand that teaches one to walk without slackening?! It teaches with a slap, and it teaches with tenderness.