What crazy nonsense people swallow! So
Cleon smiled in his wisdom and went on his way. But through the lines
of his speech we feel the rising tide of Christianity, where
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
AN EPISTLE
CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH, THE ARAB
PHYSICIAN
1855
Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,
The not-incurious in 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
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,
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.
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