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Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears, Of all the lost adventurers my peers, How such a one was strong, and such was bold,

And such was fortunate, yet each of old Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met

To view the last of me, a living frame For one more picture! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.

AN EPISTLE

CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN

[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 vapour 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 vapour 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 snake-stone-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.

My journeyings were brought to Jericho: Thus I resume. Who studious in our art Shail count a little labour 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 rumours 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-grey back;

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

The Syrian run-a-gate 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, Judaea's gum-tragacanth Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearergrained,

Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry, In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-discase 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 priceSuppose 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.

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 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!

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,

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'll 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 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-
'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

For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,
Or pretermission of his daily craft —

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He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live So long as God please, and just how God please.

He even secketh 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 neighbour 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 — 'How, beast,' said I, 'this stolid careless

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As a wise workman recognizes tools

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 travels 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,
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

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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:

But take one-though I loathe to give it thee,

In mere respect to 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,

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To the centre, of an instant: or around

Turned calmly and inquisitive, to scan The licence and the limit, space and bound, Allowed to Truth made visible in Man. And, like that youth ye praise so, all I saw, Over the canvas could my hand have flung,

Each face obedient to its passion's law, Each passion clear proclaimed without a tongue;

Whether Hope rose at once in all the blood.
A-tiptoe for the blessing of embrace.
Or Rapture drooped the eyes, as when her
brood

Pull down the nesting dove's heart to its place;

Or Confidence lit swift the forehead up, And locked the mouth fast, like a castle braved,

O human faces, hath it spilt, my cup? What did ye give me that I have not saved?

Nor will I say I have not dreamed (how well!)

Of going I, in each new picture,

forth,

As, making new hearts beat and bosoms swell,

To Pope or Kaiser, East, West, South or North,

Bound for the calmly satisfied great State, Or glad aspiring little burgh, it went, Flowers cast upon the car which bore the freight,

Through old streets named afresh from its event,

Till it reached home, where learned Age should greet

My face, and Youth, the star not yet distinct

Above his hair, lie learning at my feet!

Oh, thus to live, I and my picture, linked With love about, and praise, till life should end,

And then not go to heaven, but linger here,

Here on my earth, earth's every man my friend,

The thought grew frightful, 'twas so wildly dear!

But a voice changed it! Glimpses of such sights

Have scared me, like the revels through a door

Of some strange House of Idols at its rites;

This world seemed not the world it was before:

Mixed with my loving trusting ones there trooped

Who summoned those cold faces that begun

To press on me and judge me? Though I stooped

Shrinking, as from the soldiery a nun, They drew me forth, and spite of me.

enough!

These buy and sell our pictures, take and give,

Count them for garniture and householdstuff,

And where they live our pictures needs must live

And see their faces, listen to their prate, Partakers of their daily pettiness, Discussed of 'This I love, or this I hate, This likes me more, and this affects me less!'

Wherefore I chose my portion. If at whiles

My heart sinks, as monotonous I paint These endless cloisters and eternal aisles With the same series, Virgin, Babe and Saint,

With the same cold, calm, beautiful regard,

At least no merchant traffics in my heart; The sanctuary's gloom at least shall ward Vain tongues from where my pictures

stand apart:

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