Why need the other women know so much 18. Might I die last and show thee! Should I find Such hardship in the few years left behind, The better that they are so blank, I know! 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 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, 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, I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone With rumours of a marching hitherward - Since this poor covert where I pass the night, To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip 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 Take five and drop them. . . but who knows his mind, His service payeth me a sublimate - Gather what most deserves and give thee all · Yet stay my Syrian blinketh gratefully, Protesteth his devotion is my price Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal? What set me off a-writing first of all. 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) |