Men and Women. Robert Browning

bloom to the pale skin back,

       And laid the strips and lagged ends of flesh

       Even once more, and slacked the sinew's knot 110

       Of every tortured limb—that now he lies

       As if mere sleep possessed him underneath

       These interwoven oaks and pines. Oh cheer,

       Divine presenter of the healing rod,

       Thy snake, with ardent throat and lulling eye,

       Twines his lithe spires around! I say, much cheer!

       Proceed thou with thy wisest pharmacies!

       And ye, white crowd of woodland sister-nymphs,

       Ply, as the sage directs, these buds and leaves

       That strew the turf around the twain! While I 120

       Await, in fitting silence, the event.

       NOTES

       "Artemis Prologizes" represents the goddess Artemis awaiting the

       revival of the youth Hippolytus, whom she has carried to her woods

       and given to Asclepios to heal. It is a fragment meant to introduce

       an unwritten work and carry on the story related by Euripides in

       "Hippolytus," which see.