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.
Some elders of his tribe, I should premise,
Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep,
To bear my inquisition. While they spoke,
Now sharply, now with sorrow,
told the case, -

He listened not except I spoke to him,

But folded his two hands and let them talk,

Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool.
And that's a sample how his years must go.

Look if a beggar, in fixed middle-life,

Should find a treasure, can he use the same

With straitened habits and with tastes starved small,

120

And take at once to his impoverished brain

The sudden element that changes things,

130

That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand,

And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust?

Is he not such an one as moves to mirth
Warily parsimonious, when no need,
Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times?
All prudent counsel as to what befits
The golden mean, is lost on such ar ne:
The man's fantastic will is the man's raw.
So here we call the treasure knowledge, say,
Increased beyond the fleshly faculty —

140

Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth,

Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven:
The man is witless of the size, the sum,

The value in proportion of all things,
Or whether it be little or be much.

Discourse to him of prodigious armaments
Assembled to besiege his city now,

And of the passing of a mule with gourds

'Tis one! Then take it on the other side,

Speak of some trifling fact, - he will gaze rapt
With stupor at its very littleness,
(Far as I see) as if in that indeed

He caught prodigious import, whole results,;
And so will turn to us the bystanders

In ever the same stupor (note this point)
That we too see not with his opened eyes.

Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play,

Preposterously, at cross purposes.

Should his child sicken unto death, — why, look
For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,

150

160

Or pretermission of the daily craft!

While a word, gesture, glance from that same child

At play or in the school or laid asleep,
Will startle him to an agony of fear,
Exasperation, just as like. Demand

The reason why-"'t is but a word," object-
"A gesture
- he regards thee as our lord
Who lived there in the pyramid alone,

Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young,
We both would unadvisedly recite

Some charm's beginning, from that book of his,
Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst

All into stars, as suns grown old are wont.
Thou and the child have each a veil alike

Thrown o'er your heads, from under which ye both
Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match
Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know!
He holds on firmly to some thread of life
(It is the life to lead perforcedly)
Which runs across some vast distracting orb
Of glory on either side that meagre thread,
Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet-
The spiritual life around the earthly life:
The law of that is known to him as this,
His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here.
So is the man perplext with impulses
Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on,
Proclaiming what is right and wrong across,

And not along, this black thread thro' the blaze —
"It should be" balked by "here it can not be."
And oft the man's soul springs into his face
As if he saw again and heard again

His sage that bade him "Rise" and he did rise.
Something, a word, a tick o' the blood within
Admonishes: then back he sinks at once
To ashes, who was very fire before,
In sedulous recurrence to his trade

Whereby he earneth him the daily bread;

170

180

190

And studiously the humbler for that pride,
Professedly the faultier that he knows

God's secret, while he holds the thread of life.
Indeed the especial marking of the man

Is prone submission to the heavenly will

Seeing it, what it is, and why it is.
'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last

For that same death which must restore his being
To equilibrium, body loosening soul

200

Divorced even now by premature full growth:
He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live

So long as God please, and just how God please.

210

He even seeketh not to please God more
(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.
Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach
The doctrine of his sect whate'er it be,
Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do:
How can he give his neighbour the real ground,
His own conviction? Ardent as he is —
Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old
"Be it as God please" reassureth him.
I probed the sore as thy disciple should:
"How, beast," said I, "this stolid carelessness
Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march
To stamp out like a little spark thy town,
Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?"
He merely looked with his large eyes on me.
The man is apathetic, you deduce?

Contrariwise, he loves both old and young,
Able and weak, affects the very brutes

220

And birds - how say I? flowers of the field

As a wise workman recognizes tools

230

In a master's workshop, loving what they make.

Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb:

Only impatient, let him do his best,

At ignorance and carelessness and sin -
An indignation which is promptly curbed :
As when in certain travel I have feigned
To be an ignoramus in our art

According to some preconceived design,
And happed to hear the land's practitioners
Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance,
Prattle fantastically on disease,

Its cause and cure - and I must hold my peace!

Thou wilt object - Why have I not ere this

Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene
Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source,
Conferring with the frankness that befits?

Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech
Perished in a tumult many years ago,

Accused, — our learning's fate, of wizardry,

Rebellion, to the setting up a rule

And creed prodigious as described to me.

His death, which happened when the earthquake fell

(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss

To occult learning in our lord the sage
Who lived there in the pyramid alone)

Was wrought by the mad people—that's their wont!
On vain recourse, as I conjecture it,

240

250

To his tried virtue, for miraculous help —

How could he stop the earthquake? That's their way!

The other imputations must be lies:

260

But take one, tho' I loathe to give it thee,

In mere respect for any good man's fame.

(And after all, our patient Lazarus

Is stark mad; should we count on what he says?
Perhaps not tho' in writing to a leech

'T is well to keep back nothing of a case.)
This man so cured regards the curer, then,
As God forgive me! who but God himself,
Creator and sustainer of the world,

That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile.

-'Sayeth that such an one was born and lived,

Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house,
Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know,

And yet was

what I said nor choose repeat,

And must have so avouched himself, in fact,

In hearing of this very Lazarus

Who saith—but why all this of what he saith?

Why write of trivial matters, things of price
Calling at every moment for remark?

I noticed on the margin of a pool
Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort,
Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!

Thy pardon for this long and tedious case,
Which, now that I review it, needs must seem
Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth!
Nor I myself discern in what is writ
Good cause for the peculiar interest

Out there came.

And awe indeed this man has touched me with.
Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness
Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus:
I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills
Like an old lion's cheek teeth.
A moon made like a face with certain spots
Multiform, manifold and menacing:
Then a wind rose behind me. So we met
In this old sleepy town at unaware,
The man and I. I send thee what is writ.
Regard it as a chance, a matter risked
To this ambiguous Syrian: he may lose,
Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.
Jerusalem's repose shall make amends

For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine;
Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!

270

280

290

300

The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too —
So, thro' the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine:
But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
And thou must love me who have died for thee!"
The madman saith He said so it is strange.

310

CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS;

OR,

NATURAL THEOLOGY IN THE ISLAND.

"Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself."

"WILL

sprawl, now that the heat of day is best,
Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire,
With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin,
And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush,
And feels about his spine small eft-things course,
Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh:
And while above his head a pompion-plant,
Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye,
Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard,
And now a flower drops with a bee inside,
And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch,
He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross
And recross till they weave a spider-web,
(Meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times)
And talks to his own self, howe'er he please,
Touching that other, whom his dam called God.
Because to talk about Him, vexes - ha,
Could He but know! and time to vex is now,
When talk is safer than in winter-time.
Moreover Prosper and Miranda sleep
In confidence he drudges at their task,
And it is good to cheat the pair, and gibe,
Letting the rank tongue blossom into speech.]

Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos!

"Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon.

"Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match, But not the stars; the stars came otherwise;