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Title: The Madman And The Lethargist
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge [
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AN EXAMPLE
Quoth Dick to me, as once at College
We argued on the use of knowledge;--
'In old King Olim's reign, I've read,
There lay two patients in one bed.
The one in fat lethargic trance,
Lay wan and motionless as lead:
The other, (like the Folks in France),
Possess'd a different disposition--
In short, the plain truth to confess,
The man was madder than Mad Bess!
But both diseases, none disputed,
Were unmedicinably rooted;
Yet, so it chanc'd, by Heaven's permission,
Each prov'd the other's true physician.
'Fighting with a ghostly stare
Troops of Despots in the air,
Obstreperously Jacobinical,
The madman froth'd, and foam'd, and roar'd:
The other, snoring octaves cynical,
Like good John Bull, in posture clinical,
Seem'd living only when he snor'd.
The _Citizen_ enraged to see
This fat Insensibility,
Or, tir'd with solitary labour,
Determin'd to convert his neighbour;
So up he sprang and to 't he fell,
Like devil piping hot from hell,
With indefatigable fist
Belabr'ing the poor Lethargist;
Till his own limbs were stiff and sore,
And sweat-drops roll'd from every pore:--
Yet, still, with flying fingers fleet,
Duly accompanied by feet,
With some short intervals of biting,
He executes the self-same strain,
Till the Slumberer woke for pain,
And half-prepared himself for fighting--
That moment that his mad Colleague
Sunk down and slept thro' pure fatigue.
So both were cur'd--and this example
Gives demonstration full and ample--
That _Chance_ may bring a thing to bear,
Where _Art_ sits down in blank despair.'
'That's true enough, Dick,' answer'd I,
'But as for the _Example_, 'tis a lie.'
[The end]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem: Madman And The Lethargist
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