Browning's Shorter Poems Part 21

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents 68 Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to balk 70 All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

As for the gra.s.s, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; thin dry blades p.r.i.c.ked the mud Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.

One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupefied, however he came there: Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know, With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, 80 And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane; Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.

As a man calls for wine before he fights, I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights, Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.

Think first, fight afterwards--the soldier's art: One taste of the old time sets all to rights. 90

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face 91 Beneath its garniture of curly gold, Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold An arm in mine to fix me to the place, That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!

Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.

Giles then, the soul of honour--there he stands Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.

What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.

Good--but the scene shifts--faugh! what hangman hands 100 Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

Better this present than a past like that; Back therefore to my darkening path again!

No sound, no sight so far as eye could strain.

Will the night send a howlet or a bat? 106 I asked: when something on the dismal flat Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

A sudden little river crossed my path As unexpected as a serpent comes. 110 No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath For the fiend's glowing hoof--to see the wrath Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes. 114

So petty, yet so spiteful! All along, Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: The river which had done them all the wrong, Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit. 120

Which, while I forded,--good saints, how I feared To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!

--It may have been a water-rat I speared, But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.

Glad was I when I reached the other bank.

Now for a better country. Vain presage!

Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130 Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage--

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque. 133 What penned them there, with all the plain, to choose?

No foot-print leading to that horrid mews, None out of it. Mad brewage set to work Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk 137 Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

And more than that--a furlong on--why, there!

What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, 140 Or brake, not wheel--that harrow fit to reel Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware, 143 Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood, Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes, and off he goes!) within a rood-- Bog, clay, and rubble, sand, and stark black dearth. 150

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim, Now patches where some leanness of the soil's Broke into moss or substances like boils; Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

And just as far as ever from the end, Naught in the distance but the evening, naught To point my footstep further! At the thought, A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend, 160 Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned That brushed my cap--perchance the guide I sought.

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, 'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place All round to mountains--with such name to grace Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.

How thus they had surprised me,--solve it, you!

How to get from them was no clearer case.

Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick Of mischief happened to me, G.o.ds knows when-- 170 In a bad dream, perhaps. Here ended, then, Progress this way. When, in the very nick Of giving up, one time more, came a click As when a trap shuts--you're inside the den.

Burningly it came on me all at once, This was the place! those two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; While, to the left, a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, After a life spent training for the sight! 180

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?

The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart, Built of brown stone, without a counterpart In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

Not see? because of night perhaps?--why, day Came back again for that! before it left, The dying sunset kindled thro' a cleft: The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, 190 Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay, "Now stab and end the creature--to the heft!"

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears, Of all the lost adventurers my peers,-- How such a one was strong, and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet each of old Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met To view the last of me, a living frame 200 For one more picture! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew. "_Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came._"

AN EPISTLE

CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN

Karshish, the picker up of learning's crumbs, The not incurious in G.o.d'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 s.p.a.ce 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 p.r.i.c.ks 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 G.o.d) To baffle it by deftly stopping such-- 14 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, 17 One of the other sort, the melon-shaped, (But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs) 19 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 labour unrepaid?

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 rumours of a marching hitherward: Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son. 28 A black lynx snarled and p.r.i.c.ked a tufted ear: l.u.s.t of my blood inflamed his yellow b.a.l.l.s: 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; 33 But at the end, I reach Jerusalem, Since this poor covert where I pa.s.s 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! 38 '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 44 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, 48 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, 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, Protested his devotion is my price-- Suppose I write, what harms not, tho' 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 '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 'twere 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 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!

Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?

This grown man eyes the world now like a child.