To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip 40
And share with thee whatever Jewry yields. 
A viscid choler is observable
In tertians, I was nearly bold to say;
And falling-sickness hath a happier cure
Than our school wots of:  there’s a spider here
Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs,
Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back;
Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his mind,
The Syrian runagate I trust this to? 
His service payeth me a sublimate 50
Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye. 
Best wait:  I reach Jerusalem at morn,
There set in order my experiences,
Gather what most deserves, and give thee all—­
Or I might add, Judaea’s gum-tragacanth
Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained,
Cracks ’twixt the pestle and the porphyry,
In fine exceeds our produce.  Scalp-disease
Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy—­
Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar—­ 60
But zeal outruns discretion.  Here I end.

Yet stay:  my Syrian blinketh gratefully,
Protesteth his devotion is my price—­
Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal? 
I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush,
What set me off a-writing first of all,
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. 70
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 80
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 ’t were 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 might inscribe
Whatever it was minded on the wall 90
So plainly at that vantage, as it were,
(First come, first served) that nothing subsequent
Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls
The just-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:  100