Men and Women. Robert Browning

it as God please" reassureth him.

      I probed the sore as thy disciple should:

      "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

      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,

      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

      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;

      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!

      —'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

      Blue-flowering16 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:

      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.

      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?

      1

      Boehme: Jacob, an "inspired" German shoemaker (1575-1624), who wrote "Aurora," "The Three Principles," etc., mystical commentaries on Biblical events. When twenty-five years old, says Hotham in "Mysterium Magnum," 1653, "he was surrounded by a divine Light and replenished with heavenly Knowledge . . . going abroad into the Fieldes to a Greene before Neys-Gate at Gorlitz and viewing the H

1

Boehme: Jacob, an "inspired" German shoemaker (1575-1624), who wrote "Aurora," "The Three Principles," etc., mystical commentaries on Biblical events. When twenty-five years old, says Hotham in "Mysterium Magnum," 1653, "he was surrounded by a divine Light and replenished with heavenly Knowledge . . . going abroad into the Fieldes to a Greene before Neys-Gate at Gorlitz and viewing the Herbes and Grass of the Fielde, in his inward light he saw into their Essences . . . and from that Fountain of Revelation wrote <De Signatura Rerum>," on the signatures of things, the "tough book" to which Browning refers.

2

Halberstadt:

16

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.