User:Jeffcole0/sandbox

Folly, error, sin, miserliness, Occupy our minds and train our bodies, And we feed our pleasant remorse, As beggars nourish their vermin.

Our sins are stubborn, our regrets are slack; We make ourselves pay our confessions handsomely, And we return cheerfully into out miry way, Believing by vile tears to wash all our stains.

On the pillow of evil is Satan Trismegiste Who long cradles our enchanted minds, And the rich metal of our volition Is all vaporized by this scholarly chemist.

It is the devil who conducts the strings which move us! To foul purposes we find charms; Each day we descend a step towards Hell, Without horror, to traverse the reeking darkness.

As a debauched pauper who sucks and eats The martyred breast of an ancient whore, We rob in passing a hidden pleasure Which we squeeze strongly like an old orange.

Cramped, teaming, like a million worms In our brains carouse a populace of demons, And, when we breathe, death in our lungs Descends, invisible river, with deafness to complaints.

If rape, poison, dagger, fire Have not yet embroidered their pleasant designs On the trivial canvases of our piteous fates, It is because our soul, alas! is not sufficiently bold.

But among the jackals, panthers, vermin, Monkeys, scorpions, vultures, serpents, The monsters yelp, roar, growl, creep, In the odious menagerie of our vices,

One is more nasty, more vicious, more foul! Though neither growing nor gesturing greatly nor shouting loudly, It would readily make a wreck of the Earth And in a yawn would swallow the would;

It is Apathy!-the eye loads a tear involuntarily, It dreams of scaffolds in its smoking pipe. You know it, reader, this delicate monster, -Hypocrite reader,- my fellow man,- my brother.