gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, Chafes in the censer.4 Leave we the unlettered plain5 its herd and crop; Seek we sepulture0 burial place 15 On a tall mountain, citied to the top, Crowded with culture! All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; Clouds overcome it; No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's 20 Circling its summit. Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights: Wait ye the warning? Our low life was the level's and the night's; He's for the morning. 25 Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, Ware the beholders!6 This is our master, famous, calm, and dead, Borne on our shoulders.
Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, so Safe from the weather! He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, Singing together,
1. The speaker is one of the students who are ing. bearing the body of their scholarly master to the 2. Small tracts of land farmed by peasants. mountaintop for burial. No specific model for the 3. Restricted to a narrow sphere like an animal grammarian has been identified. Browning seems tied to a stake. to have had in mind the kind of early Renaissance 4. Container in which incense is burned. scholar whose devotion to the Greek language 5. Flatlands at the base of the mountain that are made it possible for others to enjoy the more rec-populated by illiterate shepherds and peasants. ognizably significant aspects of the revival of learn-6. Let the beholders beware!
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A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL / 128 7
He was a man born with thy face and throat, Lyric Apollo!7 35 Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note Winter would follow? Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone! Cramped and diminished, Moaned he, 'New measures, other feet anon! 40 My dance is finished?' No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side, Make for the city!) He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride Over men's pity; 45 Left play for work, and grappled with the world Bent on escaping: 'What's in the scroll,' quoth he, 'thou keepest furled? Show me their shaping, Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage? 50 Give!'?So, he gowned him,8 Straight0 got by heart that book to its last page: immediately Learned, we found him. Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead, Accents uncertain: 55 'Time to taste life,' another would have said, 'Up with the curtain!' This man said rather, 'Actual life comes next? Patience a moment! Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text, 60 Still there's the comment.9 Let me know all! Prate not of most or least, Painful or easy! Even to the crumbs I'd fain? eat up the feast, gladly Aye, nor feel queasy.' 65 Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, When he had learned it, When he had gathered all books had to give! Sooner, he spurned it. Image the whole, then execute the parts? 70 Fancy the fabric Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz, Ere mortar dab brick! (Here's the town gate reached: there's the market place Gaping before us.) 75 Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace (Hearten our chorus!) That before living he'd learn how to live? No end to learning: Earn the means first?God surely will contrive so Use for our earning.
7. Classical god of music and poetry; the embod-8. Dressed in academic gown; became a scholar. iment of male beauty. 9. Commentaries or annotations on a text.
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128 8 / ROBERT BROWNING
Others mistrust and say, 'But time escapes: Live now or never!' He said, 'What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever.' 85 Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head: Calculus' racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: Tussis? attacked him. a cough 'Now, master, take a little rest!'?not he! 90 (Caution redoubled, Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!) Not a whit troubled Back to his studies, fresher than at first, Fierce as a dragon 95 He (soul-hydroptic2 with a sacred thirst) Sucked at the flagon. Oh, if we draw a circle premature, Heedless of far gain, Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure IOO Bad is our bargain! Was it not great? did not he throw on God (He loves the burthen)? God's task to make the heavenly period Perfect the earthen? 105 Did not he magnify the mind, show clear Just what it all meant? He would not discount life, as fools do here, Paid by installment. He ventured neck or nothing?heaven's success 110 Found, or earth's failure: 'Wilt thou trust death or not?' He answered 'Yes: Hence with life's pale lure!' That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: in This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred's soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million, 120 Misses an unit.3 That, has the world here?should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him. 125 So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer
1. A gallstone or other hard inorganic mass within 3. A small item, such as some trifling worldly plea- the body. sure. 2. Insatiably thirsty.
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KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN / 128 9
He settled Hoti's business?let it be!? 130 Properly based Oun? Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,4 Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus,0 regions 135 All ye highfliers of the feathered race, Swallows and curlews! Here's the top peak; the multitude below Live, for they can, there: This man decided not to Live but Know? 140 Bury this man there? Here?here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, Peace let the dew send! 145 Lofty designs must close in like effects: Loftily lying, Leave him?still loftier than the world suspects, Living and dying.
ca. 1854 1855
An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician1
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,
5 To coop up and keep down on earth a space0 for a time That puff of vapor from his mouth, man's soul2) ?To Abib, all-sagacious in our art, Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast, Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks
io 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:?
4. 'Hoti,' 'Oun,' and 'De': Greek particles mean-developments he has encountered. Most recently ing 'that,' 'then,' and 'toward.' 'Enclitic': in he has been intrigued by the story of Lazarus, a Jew effect (and literally, in the case of de) a suffix. In who is reputed to have died and been miraculously an 1863 letter Browning commented to Tennyson brought back to life by a 'Nazarene physician' (as that he wanted his grammarian to have been work- Jesus is called here) many years earlier (cf. John ing on 'the biggest of the littlenesses.' 11.1?44). Karshish's letter is addressed from Beth1. The letter is written in 66 C.E., just before the lehem to Abib, formerly his science teacher and Romans invaded Palestine. During a journey now his colleague and friend. Both scientists are across the country, Karshish, whose name in Ara-imaginary characters. bic means 'one who gathers' (or roughly, 'the 2.
