Explore "A Death in the Desert" by Robert Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
[Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene: / It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth, / Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek, / And goeth from _Epsilon_ down to _Mu: _ / Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest, / Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth, / Covered with cloth of hair, and lettered _Xi_, / From Xanthus, my wife's uncle now at peace: / _Mu_ and _Epsilon_ stand for my own name. / I may not write it, but I make a cross / To show I wait His coming, with the rest, / And leave off here: beginneth Pamphylax.]
I said, "If one should wet his lips with wine, / And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find, / Or else the lappet of a linen robe, / Into the water-vessel, lay it right, / And cool his forehead just above the eyes, / The while a brother, kneeling either side, / Should chafe each hand and try to make it warm, -- / He is not so far gone but he might speak."