Men and Women. Robert Browning

snake, with ardent throat and lulling eye,

      Twines his lithe spires around! I say, much cheer!

      Proceed thou with thy wisest pharmacies!

      And ye, white crowd of woodland sister-nymphs,

      Ply, as the sage directs, these buds and leaves

      That strew the turf around the twain! While I

      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,

      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 snakestone6—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

      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 Vespasian7 comes, some, his son.

      A black lynx8 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,9 I was nearly bold to say;

      And falling-sickness10 hath a happier cure

      Than our school wots of: there's a spider here11

      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

      Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye.

      Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn,

      There set in order my experiences,12

      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 Zoar13—

      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.

      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, 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

      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

6

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.

7

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.

8

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

9

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

10

Falling-sickness: epilepsy. Caesar's disease ("Julius Caesar," I. 2, 258).

11

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.)

12

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

13

Zoar: the only one that was spared of the five cities of the plain (Genesis 14. 2).