Men and Women | Page 9

strew the turf around the twain! While I 120 Await, in fitting silence, the event.
NOTES
"Artemis Prologizes" represents the goddess Artemis awaiting the revival of the youth Hippolytus, whom she has carried to her woods and given to Asclepios to heal. It is a fragment meant to introduce an unwritten work and carry on the story related by Euripides in "Hippolytus," which see.
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 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