Lightnings are loosened,

Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
Peace let the dew send !

Lofty designs must close in like effects:

CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE of Karshish, thE ARAB PHYSICIAN.

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 vapor 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 vapor fain would slip
Back and rejoin its source before the term, -

-

And aptest in contrivance (under God)

To baffle it by deftly stopping such :

ΙΟ

The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home

Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace)
Three samples of true snake-stone

rarer still,

One of the other sort, the melon-shaped

1. Karshish... To Abib.

17. snake-stone: a certain kind of stone supposed to be efficacious when placed upon the bite of a snake, in absorbing or charming away the poison.

(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 labor 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 rumors 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-gray back;

Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his mind,

20

30

40

21. My journeyings were brought to Jericho: i.e., in his last letter. 28. Vespasian: T. Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus, Roman emperor, A.D. 7079; sent by Nero in 66 to conduct the war against the Jews; when proclaimed emperor, left his son Titus to continue the war.

24-33. his ardent scientific interest has caused him to brave all dangers.

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, Judæa'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,

or else

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,
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,

550

60

70

49. The Syrian runagate: perhaps I'm writing for nothing in trusting my letter to him.

60. Thou hadst: wouldst have. Zoar: one of the "cities of the plain," S. E of the Dead Sea (Gen. xix. 22).

65-78. Though he's deeply impressed with the subject, he approaches it with extreme diffidence, writing to the "all-sagacious" Abib.

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!

82. exhibition: used in its medical sense of administering a remedy.

103. fume: vaporish fancy.

80

90

100

106. As saffron tingeth: Chaucer uses "saffron " metaphorically as a verb:

"And in Latyn I speke a wordes fewe,

To saffron with my predicacioun,

And for to stire men to devocioun." The Pardoner's Prologue.

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,

113. Think, could we penetrate by any drug.