The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century Literature Part 16

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.

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 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 pleased to write Whatever it was minded on the wall So plainly at that vantage, as it were (First come, first served), that nothing subsequent Attaineth to erase the fancy-scrawls Which the 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: --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, 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.

Some elders of his tribe, I should premise, Let 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 straightened habits and with tastes starved small, And take at once to his impoverished brain The sudden element that changes things, --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's no need, Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times?

All prudent counsel, as to what befits The golden mean, is lost on such an one.

The man's fantastic will is the man's law.

So here--we'll call the treasure knowledge, say-- Increased beyond the fleshy faculty-- 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 a.s.sembled to besiege his city now, And of the pa.s.sing 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, Or pretermission of his daily craft,-- While a word, gesture, glance, from that same child At play or in the school or laid asleep, Will start him to an agony of fear, Exasperation, just as like! demand The reason why--"'tis 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 through the blaze-- "It should be" balked by "here it cannot 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 of the blood within Admonishes--then back he sinks at once To ashes, that was very fire before, In sedulous recurrence to his trade Whereby he earneth him the daily bread-- And studiously the humbler for that pride, Professedly the faultier that he knows G.o.d's secret, while he holds the thread of life.

Indeed the especial marking of the man Is p.r.o.ne 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 will restore his being To equilibrium, body loosening soul Divorced even now by premature full growth: He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live So long as G.o.d please, and just how G.o.d please.

He even seeketh not to please G.o.d more (Which meaneth, otherwise) than as G.o.d 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 neighbor the real ground, His own conviction? ardent as he is-- Call his great truth a lie, why still the old "Be it as G.o.d please" rea.s.sureth 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 And birds--how say I? flowers of the field-- As a wise workman recognizes tools 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 travels I have feigned To be an ignoramus in our art According to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's pract.i.tioners, 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 That lived there in the pyramid alone) Was wrought by the mad people--that's their wont-- On vain recourse, as I conjecture it, To his tried virtue, for miraculous help-- How could he stop the earthquake? That's their way!

The other imputations must be lies: But take one--though I loathe to give it thee, In mere respect to any good man's fame!

(And after all our patient Lazarus Is stark mad--should we count on what he says?

Perhaps not--though in writing to a leech 'Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.--) This man so cured regards the curer, then, As--G.o.d forgive me--who but G.o.d 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 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. Out there came 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!

The very G.o.d! think, Abib; dost thou think?

So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too-- So, through the thunder comes a human voice Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here!

Face, my hands fas.h.i.+oned, see it in myself.

Thou hast no power nor may'st 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.

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 G.o.d.

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; Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that: Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon, And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same.

'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease: He hated that He cannot change His cold, Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived, And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave; Only, she ever sickened, found repulse At the other kind of water, not her life (Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun), Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe, And in her old bounds buried her despair, Hating and loving warmth alike: so He.

'Thinketh, He made thereat the sun, this isle, Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing.

Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech; Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam, That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue That p.r.i.c.ks deep into oakwarts for a worm, And says a plain word when she finds her prize, But will not eat the ants; the ants themselves That build a wall of seeds and settled stalks About their hole--He made all these and more, Made all we see, and us, in spite: how else?

He could not, Himself, make a second self To be His mate: as well have made Himself: He would not make what he mislikes or slights, An eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains: But did, in envy, listlessness or sport, Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, be-- Weaker in most points, stronger in a few, Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while, Things He admires and mocks too,--that is it.

Because, so brave, so better though they be, It nothing skills if He begin to plague.

Look now, I melt a gourd-fruit into mash, Add honeycomb and pods, I have perceived, Which bite like finches when they bill and kiss,-- Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink up all, Quick, quick, till maggots scamper through my brain; Last, throw me on my back i' the seeded thyme, And wanton, wis.h.i.+ng I were born a bird.

Put case, unable to be what I wish, I yet could make a live bird out of clay: Would not I take clay, pinch my Caliban Able to fly?--for, there, see, he hath wings, And great comb like the hoopoe's to admire, And there, a sting to do his foes offence, There, and I will that he begin to live, Fly to yon rock-top, nip me off the horns Of grigs high up that make the merry din, Saucy through their veined wings, and mind me not.

In which feat, if his leg snapped, brittle clay, And he lay stupid-like,--why, I should laugh; And if he, spying me, should fall to weep, Beseech me to be good, repair his wrong, Bid his poor leg smart less or grow again,-- Well, as the chance were, this might take or else Not take my fancy: I might hear his cry, And give the mankin three sound legs for one, Or pluck the other off, leave him like an egg, And lessoned he was mine and merely clay.

Were this no pleasure, lying in the thyme, Drinking the mash, with brain become alive, Making and marring clay at will? So He.

'Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him, Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.

'Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs That march now from the mountain to the sea; Let twenty pa.s.s, and stone the twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.

'Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off; 'Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm, And two worms he whose nippers end in red; As it likes me each time, I do: so He.

Well then, 'supposeth He is good i' the main, Placable if His mind and ways were guessed, But rougher than His handiwork, be sure!

Oh, He hath made things worthier than Himself, And envieth that, so helped, such things do more Than He who made them! What consoles but this?