by Robert Browning, 1855
Okay, if you haven't read any Browning, it's high time you did. He's hard to beat.
Karshish,
the picker-up of learning's crumbs,
The
not-incurious in God's handiwork
(This man's-flesh
he hath admirably made,
Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,
To coop up and keep down on earth a space
That puff of vapour from his mouth, man's soul)
-- To Abib, all-
sagacious in our art,
Breeder in me of
what poor skill I boast,
Like me
inquisitive how pricks and cracks
Befall the flesh through too much
stress and strain,
Whereby
the wily vapour fain would slip
Back and rejoin its source before the term, --
And
aptest in contrivance (under
God)
To
baffle it by deftly stopping such: --
The
vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home
Sends greeting (
health and knowledge, fame with peace)
Three samples of true
snakestone -- rarer still,
One of the other sort, the
melon-shaped,
(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs)
And writeth now the twenty-second time.
My journeyings were brought to
Jericho;
Thus I resume.
Who studious in our art
Shall count a little labour unrepaid?
I have shed sweat enough, left
flesh and bone
On many a
flinty
furlong of this land.
Also, the country-side is all on fire
With rumours of a marching hitherward:
Some say
Vespasian cometh, some, his son.
A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear;
Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow
balls:
I cried and threw my staff and he was gone.
Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me,
And once a town declared me for a spy;
But at the end, I reach
Jerusalem,
Since this poor
covert where I pass the night,
This
Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence
A man with
plague-sores at the third degree
Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here!
'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe,
To void the stuffing of my travel-
scrip
And share with thee whatever
Jewry yields
A
viscid choler is observable
In
tertians, I was nearly bold to say;
And
falling-sickness hath a happier cure
Than our school wots of: there's a spider here
Weaves no web,
watches on the ledge of tombs,
Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-grey back;
Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his mind,
The
Syrian
runagate I trust this to?
His service payeth me a
sublimate
Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye.
Best wait: I reach
Jerusalem at morn,
There set in order my experiences,
Gather what most deserves, and give thee all --
Or I might add,
Judea's
gum-
tragacanth
Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained,
Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the
porphyry,
In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease
Confounds me, crossing so with
leprosy --
Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at
Zoar --
But
zeal outruns discretion. Here I end.
Yet stay: my
Syrian blinketh gratefully,
Protesteth
his devotion is my price --
Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal?
I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush,
What set me off a-writing first of all.
An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang!
For, be it this town's barrenness -- or else
The Man had something in the look of him --
His case has struck me far more than 'tis worth.
So, pardon if -- (lest presently I lose
In
the great press of novelty at hand
The care and pains this somehow stole from me)
I
bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind,
Almost in sight -- for,
wilt thou have the truth?
The very man is gone from me but now,
Whose
ailment is the subject of discourse.
Thus then, and let thy better wit help all!
'Tis but a case of
mania --
subinduced
By
epilepsy, at the turning-point
Of
trance prolonged unduly some three days:
When, by the exhibition of some drug
Or spell,
exorcization,
stroke of art
Unknown to me and which 'twere well to know,
The evil thing out-breaking all at once
Left the man whole and sound of body indeed, --
But,
flinging (so to speak) life's gates too wide,
Making
a clear house of it too suddenly,
The first
conceit that entered might
inscribe
Whatever it was minded on the wall
So plainly at that
vantage, as it were,
(
First come, first served) that nothing
subsequent
Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls
The just-returned and new-established soul
Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart
That
henceforth she will read or these or none.
And first -- the man's own
firm conviction rests
That he was dead (
in fact they buried him)
-- That he was dead and then restored to life
By a
Nazarene physician of his tribe:
-- 'Sayeth, the same bade "Rise," and he did rise.
"Such cases are
diurnal," thou wilt cry.
Not so this figment! -- not, that such a
fume,
Instead of giving way to
time and health,
Should eat itself into the life of life,
As
saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones and all!
For see, how he takes up the after-life.
The man -- it is one
Lazarus a
Jew,
Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age,
The body's habit wholly laudable,
As much, indeed, beyond the common health
As he were made and put aside to show.
Think, could we penetrate by any drug
And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh,
And bring it clear and fair, by three days' sleep!
Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?
This grown man eyes the world now like a child.
Some
elders of his tribe, I should premise,
Led in their friend,
obedient as a sheep,
To bear my
inquisition. While they spoke,
Now sharply, now with sorrow, -- told the case, --
He listened not except I spoke to him,
But folded his two hands and let them talk,
Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet
no fool.
And that's a sample how his years must go.
Look, if a
beggar, in fixed middle-life,
Should find a treasure, -- can he use the same
With straitened habits and with tastes starved small,
And take at once to his
impoverished brain
The sudden element that changes things,
That sets the undreamed-of
rapture at his hand
And puts
the cheap old joy in the scorned dust?
Is he not such an one as moves to mirth --
Warily parsimonious, when no need
Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times?
All
prudent counsel as to what befits
The golden mean, is lost on such an one
The man's fantastic will is the man's law.
So here -- we call the treasure knowledge, say,
Increased beyond the fleshly
faculty --
Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth,
Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven:
The man is
witless of the size, the sum,
The value in
proportion of all things,
Or whether it be little or be much.
Discourse to him of
prodigious armaments
Assembled to
besiege his city now,
And of the passing of a mule with gourds --
'Tis one! Then take it on the other side,
Speak of some
trifling fact -- he will gaze
rapt
With
stupor at its very littleness,
(Far as I see) as if in that indeed
He caught
prodigious import, whole results;
And so will turn to us the bystanders
In ever the same
stupor (note this point)
That
we too see not with his opened eyes.
Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play,
Preposterously, at cross purposes.
Should his child
sicken unto death, -- why, look
For scarce
abatement of his cheerfulness,
Or
pretermission of the daily
craft!
While a word, gesture, glance, from that same child
At play or in the school or laid asleep,
Will startle him to
an agony of fear,
Exasperation, just as like. Demand
The reason why --" `tis but a word," object --
"A gesture" -- he regards thee as our
lord
Who lived there in the pyramid alone
Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young,
We both would unadvisedly recite
Some charm's beginning, from that book of his,
Able
to bid the sun throb wide and burst
All into stars,
as suns grown old are wont.
Thou and the child have each a veil alike
Thrown o'er your heads, from under which ye both
Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match
Over a mine of
Greek fire, did ye know!
He holds on firmly to some thread of life --
(It is the life to lead
perforcedly)
Which runs across some vast distracting
orb
Of glory
on either side that meagre thread,
Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet --
The spiritual life around the earthly life:
The law of that is known to him as this,
His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here.
So is the man
perplext with impulses
Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on,
Proclaiming what is right and wrong across,
And not along,
this black thread through the blaze --
"It should be" baulked by "here it cannot be."
And
oft the man's soul springs into his face
As if he saw again and heard again
His sage that
bade him "Rise" and he did rise.
Something, a word,
a tick of the blood within
Admonishes: then back he sinks at once
To ashes, who was very fire before,
In
sedulous recurrence to his trade
Whereby he earneth him the
daily bread;
And studiously the humbler for that pride,
Professedly the faultier that he knows
God's secret, while he holds
the thread of life.
Indeed the especial marking of the man
Is
prone submission to the heavenly will --
Seeing it, what it is, and why it is.
'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last
For that same death which must restore his being
To
equilibrium, body loosening soul
Divorced even now by premature full growth:
He will live, nay,
it pleaseth him to live
So long as God please, and just how God please.
He even seeketh not to please God more
(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.
Hence, I perceive not he affects to
preach
The doctrine of his sect whate'er it be,
Make
proselytes as madmen thirst to do:
How can he give his neighbour the real ground,
His own
conviction?
Ardent as he is--
Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old
"
Be it as God please" reassureth him.
I probed the sore as thy
disciple should:
"How, beast," said I, "this
stolid carelessness
Sufficeth thee, when
Rome is on her march
To stamp out like a little spark thy town,
Thy
tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?"
He merely looked with his large eyes on me.
The man is
apathetic, you
deduce?
Contrariwise, he loves both old and young,
Able and weak, affects the very brutes
And birds -- how say I? flowers of the field --
As
a wise workman recognizes tools
In a master's workshop, loving what they make.
Thus is the man
as harmless as a lamb:
Only impatient, let him do his best,
At
ignorance and carelessness and sin --
An
indignation which is promptly curbed:
As when in certain travels I have feigned
To be an
ignoramus in our art
According to some preconceived
design,
And happed to hear the land's
practitioners,
Steeped in
conceit sublimed by ignorance,
Prattle fantastically on disease,
Its cause and cure -- and I must hold my peace!
Thou wilt object -- why have I not ere this
Sought out the sage himself, the
Nazarene
Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source,
Conferring with the frankness that befits?
Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech
Perished in a
tumult many years ago,
Accused, -- our learning's fate, -- of
wizardry,
Rebellion, to the setting up a rule
And creed prodigious as described to me.
His death, which happened when the earthquake fell
(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss
To occult learning in our lord the
sage
Who lived there in the pyramid alone)
Was wrought by the mad people -- that's their wont!
On
vain recourse, as I conjecture it,
To his tried virtue, for miraculous help --
How could he stop the earthquake? That's their way!
The other
imputations must be lies:
But take one, though I loathe to give it thee,
In mere respect for any good man's fame.
(And after all, our patient
Lazarus
Is
stark mad; should we count on what he says?
Perhaps not: though in writing to a
leech
'Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.)
This man so cured regards the curer, then
As --
God forgive me! who but
God himself,
Creator and sustainer of the world,
That came and dwelt in flesh on 't awhile!
-- 'Sayeth that such
an one was born and lived,
Taught, healed the sick,
broke bread at his own house,
Then died, with
Lazarus by, for aught I know,
And yet was . . . what I said nor choose repeat,
And must have so avouched himself, in fact,
In hearing of this very
Lazarus
Who
saith -- but why all this of what he
saith?
Why write of
trivial matters, things of price
Calling at every moment for remark?
I noticed on the margin of a pool
Blue-flowering
borage, the
Aleppo sort,
Aboundeth, very
nitrous. It is strange!
Thy pardon for this long and tedious case,
Which, now that I review it, needs must seem
Unduly dwelt on,
prolixly set forth!
Nor I myself discern in what is
writ
Good cause for the peculiar interest
And
awe indeed this man has touched me with.
Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness
Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus:
I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills
Like an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there came
A
moon made like a face with certain spots
Multiform,
manifold, and menacing:
Then a wind rose behind me. So we met
In this old sleepy town at unaware,
The man and I. I send thee what is
writ.
Regard it as a chance, a matter risked
To this ambiguous
Syrian -- he may lose,
Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.
Jerusalem's repose shall make amends
For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine;
Till when, once more thy
pardon and farewell!
The very
God! think,
Abib; dost thou think?
So,
the All-Great, were
the All-Loving too --
So,
through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face,
my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
Thou hast no power nor
mayst conceive of mine,
But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
And thou must love me who have died for thee!"
The madman saith He said so:
it is strange.