| |
| 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 | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| |
| My journeyings were brought to Jericho: | |
| Thus I resume. Who studious in our art | |
| Shall count a little labor unrepaid? | |
| I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone | |
| On many a flinty furlong of this land. | 25 |
| 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: | 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, | 35 |
| 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 | 45 |
| 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 | 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, Judæa’s gum-tragacanth | 55 |
| 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, | 65 |
| 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 ’t is 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? | 75 |
| 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! | |
| |
| ’T is 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, exorcization, stroke of art | |
| Unknown to me and which ’t were well to know, | |
| The evil thing out-breaking all at once | 85 |
| 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 | 95 |
| 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, | 105 |
| 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! | 115 |
| 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. | 125 |
| 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? | 135 |
| 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. | 145 |
| 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) | 155 |
| 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 | 165 |
| 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 | 175 |
| 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. | 185 |
| 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” baulked 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 of the blood within | |
| Admonishes: then back he sinks at once | 195 |
| 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 | 205 |
| 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: | 215 |
| 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: | 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. | 225 |
| 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 recognises 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: | 235 |
| 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, | 245 |
| 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) | 255 |
| 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 | 265 |
| ’T is 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, | 275 |
| 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! | 285 |
| 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 | 295 |
| 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— | 305 |
| So, through the thunder comes a human voice | |
| Saying, “O heart I made, a heart beats here! | |
| Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself. | |
| Thou hast no power nor may’st 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. | |
| |
