1855

     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,       10

     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—

     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.                    20

     My journeyings were brought to Jericho:

     Thus I resume.  Who studious in our art

     Shall count a little labor un-repaid?

     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 comes, some, his son.

     A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear;

     Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls:                30

     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                    40

     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,

     The Syrian runagate I trust this to?

     His service payeth me a sublimate                          50

     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, Judaea'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—             60

     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.           70

     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                          80

     Of trance prolonged unduly some three days:

     When, by  the exhibition of some drug

     Or spell, exorcisation, stroke of art

     Unknown to me and which 't were 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                         90

     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:                     100

     —'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,                         110

     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,                120

     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,                   130

     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—                    140

     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—

     'T is one! Then take it on the other side,

     Speak of some trifling fact, he will gaze rapt            150

     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,                 160

     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—"'t is 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                          170

     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               180

     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" balked by "here it cannot be."             190

     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 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                    200

     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.           210

     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 neighbor 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:                 220

     "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                       230

     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 travel 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,                 240

     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                       250

     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;                       260

     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 it awhile!                270

     —'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                         280

     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:               290

     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.                300

     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, "0 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,                310

     And thou must love me who have died for thee!"

     The madman saith He said so: it is strange.

     NOTES

     "An Epistle" gives the observations and opinions of Karshish, the

     Arab physician, writing to Abib, his master, upon meeting with

     Lazarus after he has been raised from the dead.  Well versed in

     Eastern medical lore, he tries to explain the extraordinary

     phenomenon according to his knowledge.  He attributes Lazarus'

     version of the miracle to mania induced by trance, and the means

     used by the Nazarene physician to awaken him, and strengthens his

     view by describing the strange state of mind in which he finds

     Lazarus—like a child with no appreciation of the relative values of

     things.  Through his renewal of life he had caught a glimpse of it

     from the infinite point of view, and lives now only with the desire

     to please God.  His sole active quality is a great love for all

     humanity, his impatience manifests itself only at sin and ignorance,

     and is quickly curbed.  Karshish, not able to realize this new plane

     of vision in which had been revealed to Lazarus the equal worth of

     all things in the divine plan, is incapable of understanding

     Lazarus; but in spite of his attempt to make light of the case, he

     is deeply impressed by the character of Lazarus, and has besides a

     hardly acknowledged desire to believe in this revelation, told of by

     Lazarus, of God as Love.  Professor Corson says of this poem: "It

     may be said to polarize the idea, so often presented in Browning's

     poetry, that doubt is a condition of the vitality of faith."

     17. Snakestone: a name given to any substance used as a remedy for

     snake-bites; for example, some are of chalk, some of animal

     charcoal, and some of vegetable substances.

     28. Vespasian: Nero's general who marched against Palestine in 66,

     and was succeeded in the command, when he was proclaimed Emperor

     (70-79), by his son, Titus.

     29. Black lynx: the Syrian lynx is distinguished by black ears.

     43. Tertians: fevers, recurring every third day; hence the name.

     44.  Falling-sickness: epilepsy. Caesar's disease ("Julius Caesar,"

     I. 2, 258).

     45.  There's a spider here: "The habits of the aranead here

     described point very clearly to some one of the Wandering group,

     which stalk their prey in the open field or in divers

     lurking-places, and are distinguished by this habit from the other

     great group, known as the Sedentary spiders, because they sit or

     hang upon their webs and capture their prey by means of silken

     snares.  The next line is not determinative of the species, for

     there is a great number of spiders any one of which might be

     described as 'Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back.'  We have

     a little Saltigrade or Jumping spider, known as the Zebra spider

     (Epiblemum scenicum), which is found in Europe, and I believe also

     in Syria.  One often sees this species and its congeners upon the

     ledges of rocks, the edges of tombstones, the walls of buildings,

     and like situations, hunting their prey, which they secure by

     jumping upon it.  So common is the Zebra spider, that I might think

     that Browning referred to it, if I were not in doubt whether he

     would express the stripes of white upon its ash-gray abdomen by the

     word 'mottles.'  However, there arc other spiders belonging to the

     same tribe (Saltigrades) that really are mottled.  There are also

     spiders known as the Lycosids or Wolf spiders or Ground spiders,

     which are often of an ash-gray color, and marked with little whitish

     spots after the manner of Browning's Syrian species.  Perhaps the

     poet had one of these in mind, at least he accurately describes

     their manner of seeking prey.  The next line is an interrupted one,

     'Take five and drop them. . . .' Take five what?  Five of these

     ash-gray mottled spiders?  Certainly.  But what can be meant by the

     expression 'drop them'?  This opens up to us a strange chapter in

     human superstition.  It was long a prevalent idea that the spider in

     various forms possessed some occult power of healing, and men

     administered it internally or applied it externally as a cure for

     many diseases.  Pliny gives a number of such remedies.  A certain

     spider applied in a piece of cloth, or another one ('a white spider

     with very elongated thin legs'), beaten up in oil is said by this

     ancient writer upon Natural History to form an ointment for the

     eyes.  Similarly, 'the thick pulp of a spider's body, mixed with the

     oil of roses, is used for the ears.'  Sir Matthew Lister, who was

     indeed the father of English araneology, is quoted in Dr. James's

     Medical Dictionary as using the distilled water of boiled black

     spiders as an excellent cure for wounds."  (Dr. H. C. McCook in

     Poet-lore, Nov., 1889.)

     53. Gum-tragacanth: yielded by the leguminous shrub, Astragalus

     tragacantha.

     60. Zoar: the only one that was spared of the five cities of the

     plain (Genesis 14. 2).

     108. Lazarus . . . fifty years of age: in The Academy, Sept. 16,

     1896, Dr. Richard Garnett says: "Browning commits an oversight, it

     seems to me, in making Lazarus fifty years of age at the eve of the

     siege of Jerusalem, circa 68 A. D."  The miracle is supposed to have

     been wrought about 33 A. D., and Lazarus would then have been only

     fifteen, although according to tradition he was thirty when he was

     raised from the dead, and lived only thirty years after.  Upon this

     Prof. Charles B. Wright comments in Poet-lore, April, 1897: "I

     incline to think that the oversight is not Browning's.  Let us stand

     by the tradition and the resulting age of sixty-five. . . . Karshish

     is simply stating his professional judgment.  Lazarus is given an

     age suited to his appearance—he seems a man of fifty.  The years

     have touched him lightly since 'heaven opened to his soul.'

     . . . And that marvellous physical freshness deceives the very leech

     himself."

     177. Greek fire: used by the Byzantine Greeks in warfare, first

     against the Saracens at the siege of Constantinople in 673 A. D.

     Therefore an anachronism in this poem.  Liquid fire was, however,

     known to the ancients, as Assyrian bas-reliefs testify.  Greek fire

     was made possibly of naphtha, saltpetre, and sulphur, and was thrown

     upon the enemy from copper tubes; or pledgets of tow were dipped in

     it and attached to arrows.

     281. Blue-flowering borage: (Borago officianalis).  The ancients

     deemed this plant one of the four "cordial flowers," for cheering

     the spirits, the others being the rose, violet, and alkanet. Pliny

     says it produces very exhilarating effects.