Studies in Browning Author:Robert Browning Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AN EPISTLE CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCES OF KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs, The not-incurious i... more »n 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, 5 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 pricks 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 God) To baffle it by deftly stopping such :— 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, One of the other sort, the melon-shaped (But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs), 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. 25 Also, the country-side is all on fire With rumours of a marching hitherward : Some say Vespasian cometh ; some, his son. A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear ; Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls ; 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 ; But at the end I reach Jerusalem, Since this poor covert where I pass the night, 35 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 rep...« less