Karshish is referring to the old belief that the picker-up of learning's crumbs'), has been col-soul leaves the body with one's last breath, in the lecting information on medical and scientific form of a vapor.
.
1290 / ROBERT BROWNING
15 The vagrant0 Scholar to his Sage at home wandering Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace) Three samples of true snakestone3?rarer still, One of the other sort, the melon-shaped, (But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs)
20 And writeth now the twenty-second time.
My journeyings were brought to Jericho:4 Thus I resume. Who studious in our art Shall count a little labor unrepaid? I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone
25 On many a flinty furlong of this land. Also, the country-side is all on fire With rumors of a marching hitherward: Some say Vespasian5 cometh, some, his son. A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear;
30 Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls:0 eyeballs 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,
35 Since this poor covert where I pass the night, This Bethany,6 lies scarce the distance thence A man with plague-sores at the third degree Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here! 'Sooth,7 it elates me, thus reposed and safe,
40 To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip0 small bag And share with thee whatever Jewry yields. A viscid choler is observable In tertians,8 I was nearly bold to say; And falling-sickness0 hath a happier cure epilepsy
45 Than our school wots? of: there's a spider here knows 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, The Syrian runagate0 I trust this to? renegade
so His service payeth me a sublimate9 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?
55 Or I might add, Judea's gum-tragacanth' Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry,2 In fine0 exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease conclusion Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy?
3. A stone used to treat snake bites. 7. Forsooth; in truth. 4. I.e., in the last letters. 8. A sticky bile is observable in fevers occurring 5. The Roman commander (9?79 C.E.; emperor, every other day. 69?79) who invaded Palestine in 66. His son Titus 9. I.e., pays me for a medicine. destroyed Jerusalem four years later. 1. A salve derived from a plant. 6. The small village where Lazarus lives, located 2. A hard rock against which the substance is two miles east of Jerusalem. pounded with a pestle.
.
KARSHISH , TH E ARA B PHYSICIA N / 129 1 60 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? 65 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? Lazarus 70 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, 75 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?subinduced4 so By epilepsy, at the turning-point Of trance prolonged unduly some three days: When, by the exhibition0 of some drug administration Or spell, exorcization, stroke of art Unknown to me and which 'twere well to know, 85 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 conceit0 that entered might inscribe idea 90 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 95 Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart That henceforth she will read or? these or none. either 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 IOO By a Nazarene physician of his tribe: ?'Sayeth,0 the same bade 'Rise,' and he did rise. he says 'Such cases are diurnal,'5 thou wilt cry. Not so this figment!?not, that such a fume,6 Instead of giving way to time and health,
105 Should eat itself into the life of life, As saffron7 tingeth flesh, blood, bones and all!
Town north of the Dead Sea. 6. A vapor standing for a hallucinated belief. Brought about as a result of something else. 7. Yellow-colored dye made from the plant of the Occur every day. same name, also used as a spice.
.
129 2 / ROBERT BROWNING For see, how he takes up the after-life. The man?it is one Lazarus a Jew, Sanguine,0 proportioned, fifty years of age, The body's habit wholly laudable,0As 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,0Led 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 witless0 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 robust healthy say at first makes us laugh unknowing
.
