Page:Artemis to Arctaeon.djvu/35

And all the world against him. O, for that
Best gift of all, Fallopius, take my thanks--
That, and much more. At first, when Padua wrote:
"Master, Fallopius dead, resume again
The chair even he could not completely fill,
And see what usury age shall take of youth
In honours forfeited"--why, just at first,
I was quite simply credulously glad
To think the old life stood ajar for me,
Like a fond woman's unforgetting heart.
But now that death waylays me--now I know
This isle is the circumference of my days,
And I shall die here in a little while--
So also best, Fallopius!
For I see
The gods may give anew, but not restore;
And though I think that, in my chair again,
I might have argued my supplanters wrong
In this or that--this Cesalpinus, say,
With all his hot-foot blundering in the dark,
Fabricius, with his over-cautious clutch
On Galen (systole and diastole
Of Truth's mysterious heart!)--yet, other ways,
It may be that this dying serves the cause.
For Truth stays not to build her monument