ace, my hands fashioned, 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."

See before, p. 41 {about one-fifth into Part II of the Introduction},
some remarks on the psychological phase of the monologue.

"The monologue is a signal example of `emotional ratiocination'.
There is a flash of ecstasy through the strangely cautious description
of Karshish; every syllable is weighed and thoughtful,
everywhere the lines swell into perfect feeling."--Robert Buchanan.

"As an example of our poet's dramatic power in getting right at
the heart of a man, reading what is there written, and then looking
through his eyes and revealing it all in the man's own speech,
nothing can be more complete in its inner soundings and outer-keeping,
than the epistle containing the `Strange Medical Experience
of Karshish, the Arab Physician', who has been picking up
the crumbs of learning on his travels in the Holy Land,
and writes to Abib, the all-sagacious, at home. It is so solemnly real
and so sagely fine."--N. Brit. Rev., May, 1861.

A Martyr's Epitaph.

A wonderfully effective expression, effective through
its pathetic simplicity, of the peaceful spirit of a Christian,
who has triumphed over persecution and death, and passed to his reward.

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.

The speaker in this monologue is a Spanish monk, whose jealousy toward
a simple and unoffending brother has, in the seclusion of the cloister,
developed into a festering malignity. If hate, he says,
could kill a man, his hate would certainly kill Brother Laurence.
He is watching this brother, from a window of the cloister,
at work in the garden. He looks with contempt upon his honest toil;
repeats mockingly to himself, his simple talk when at meals,
about the weather and the crops; sneers at his neatness,
and orderliness, and cleanliness; imputes to him his own libidinousness.
He takes credit to himself in laying crosswise, in Jesu's praise,
his knife and fork, after refection, and in illustrating the Trinity,
and frustrating the Arian, by drinking his watered orange-pulp
in three sips, while Laurence drains his at one gulp. Now he notices
Laurence's tender care of the melons, of which it appears the good man
has promised all the brethren a feast; "so nice!" He calls to h