KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN / 129 3
160 For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,
Or pretermission' of the daily craft!
interruption
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,
165 Exasperation, just as like. Demand
The reason why?' 'tis but a word,' object?
'A gesture'?he regards thee as our lord8
Who lived there in the pyramid alone,
Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young,
170 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
175 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,9 did ye know!
He holds on firmly to some thread of life?
(It is the life to lead perforcedly)
i8o Which runs across some vast distracting orb
Of glory on either side that meager 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,1
185 His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here.
So is the man perplexed 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?
190 'It should be' balked 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 o' the blood0 within beat
pulse
195 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,
200 Professedly the faultier that0 he knows because
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.
205 'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last
