of Saville
When instinct of self-preservation is nulled and “life maddens ’gainst life amain,”
The very loss of that chief instinct is proof of a clot on the brain,
And it eats and honeycombs night and day like a burrowing mole in the ground,
Whether one dances or dines or sleeps, till a vital point it hath found,
And the deadliest sting of the subtle disease, the devil’s insidious touch
Is that though a temptation to mortal sin one knoweth it never for such,
But esteems it the highest duty to which a soul can aspire,
And is lighted to self-destruction by the martyr’s sacrific white fire,—
And how shall one fail to follow where the immolate saints have trod,
How shrink from inflicting upon one’s self the flagellant’s merited rod,
How fear to cast out mere offal—a burden so little worth
There no longer is room for it anywhere in all of the sweet wide earth?
Look you,—why, haply beneath your roof one weareth a steady smile,
