14. So must I see, from where I sit and watch, Its warrant to the very thefts from me Thy man's truth I was bold to bid God see! 15. Love so, then, if thou wilt! Give all thou canst (Say it and think it) obdurate no more, Reissue looks and words from the old mint - 16. Recoin thyself and give it them to spend, It all comes to the same thing at the end, Since mine thou wast, mine art, and mine shalt be, Faithful or faithless, sealing up the sum Or lavish of my treasure, thou must come Back to the heart's place here I keep for thee! 17. Only, why should it be with stain at all? Why need the other women know so much 18. Might I die last and show thee! Should I find If free to take and light my lamp, and go 19. Why, time was what I wanted, to turn o'er By heart each word, too much to learn at first, 20. And yet thou art the nobler of us two. What dare I dream of, that thou canst not do, Outstripping my ten small steps with one stride? I'll say then, here's a trial and a task Is it to bear? —if easy, I'll not ask Though love fail, I can trust on in thy pride. 21. Pride? - when those eyes forestall the life behind The death I have to go through! when I find, Now that I want thy help most, all of thee! What did I fear? Thy love shall hold me fast Until the little minute's sleep is past And I wake saved. And yet, it will not be! AN EPISTLE CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN. KARSHISH, the picker-up of learning's crumbs, The not-incurious in God's handiwork (This man's-flesh He hath admirably made, To coop up and keep down on earth a space 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 Shall count a little labour unrepaid? I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone But at the end, I reach Jerusalem, Since this poor covert where I pass the night, A man with plague-sores at the third degree To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip And share with thee whatever Jewry yields. 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 Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back; Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his mind, The Syrian run-a-gate I trust this to? |