53.  Gum-tragacanth:  yielded by the leguminous shrub, Astragalus tragacantha.

60.  Zoar:  the only one that was spared of the five cities of the plain (Genesis 14. 2).

108.  Lazarus . . . fifty years of age:  in The Academy, Sept. 16, 1896, Dr. Richard Garnett says:  “Browning commits an oversight, it seems to me, in making Lazarus fifty years of age at the eve of the siege of Jerusalem, circa 68 A. D.”  The miracle is supposed to have been wrought about 33 A. D., and Lazarus would then have been only fifteen, although according to tradition he was thirty when he was raised from the dead, and lived only thirty years after.  Upon this Prof.  Charles B. Wright comments in Poet-lore, April, 1897:  “I incline to think that the oversight is not Browning’s.  Let us stand by the tradition and the resulting age of sixty-five. . . .  Karshish is simply stating his professional judgment.  Lazarus is given an age suited to his appearance—­he seems a man of fifty.  The years have touched him lightly since ‘heaven opened to his soul.’ . . .  And that marvellous physical freshness deceives the very leech himself.”

177.  Greek fire:  used by the Byzantine Greeks in warfare, first against the Saracens at the siege of Constantinople in 673 A. D. Therefore an anachronism in this poem.  Liquid fire was, however, known to the ancients, as Assyrian bas-reliefs testify.  Greek fire was made possibly of naphtha, saltpetre, and sulphur, and was thrown upon the enemy from copper tubes; or pledgets of tow were dipped in it and attached to arrows.

281.  Blue-flowering borage:  (Borago officianalis).  The ancients deemed this plant one of the four “cordial flowers,” for cheering the spirits, the others being the rose, violet, and alkanet.  Pliny says it produces very exhilarating effects.

JOHANNES AGRICOLA IN MEDITATION

1842

There’s heaven above, and night by night
  I look right through its gorgeous roof;
No suns and moons though e’er so bright
  Avail to stop me; splendor-proof
  I keep the broods of stars aloof: 
For I intend to get to God,
  For ’t is to God I speed so fast,
For in God’s breast, my own abode,
  Those shoals of dazzling glory, passed,
  I lay my spirit down at last. 10
I lie where I have always lain,
  God smiles as he has always smiled;
Ere suns and moons could wax and wane,
  Ere stars were thundergirt, or piled
  The heavens, God thought on me his child;
Ordained a life for me, arrayed
  Its circumstances every one
To the minutest; ay, God said
  This head this hand should rest upon
  Thus, ere he fashioned star or sun. 20
And having thus created me,
  Thus rooted me, he bade me grow,
Guiltless forever, like a tree
  That buds and blooms, nor seeks to know
  The law by which it prospers so: