156 The Diary of a Drug Fiend
And you, you puritan others,
Who have missed the morphia craving,
Cry scorn if I call you brothers,
Curl lip at my maniac raving,
Fools, seven times beguiled,
You have not known her? Well!
There was never a need she smiled
To harry you into hell|
Morphia is but one
Spark of its secular fire.
She is the single sun—
Type of all desire !
All that you would, you are—
And that is the crown of a craving.
You are slaves of the wormwood star.
Analysed, reason 1s raving.
Feeling, examined, is patn.
What heaven were to hope for a doubt of it!
Life is anguish, insane;
And death is—not a way out of it!
“‘ Olya,” too, reminds me of myself. I have a morbid
wish to be an impossible monster of cruelty and
wickedness. ,
Lamus had told me that long ago. He said it was
the phantasm which summed up my longing to “ revert
to type.” La nostalgie de la boue.
Cockie lost all his dignity. He pleaded for just one
sniff. We weren't really very bad, but the description
of the thirst in that horrible poem had made us feel
thirsty.
“My dear man,” said Lamus very brutally. “ I’m
not a dope peddler. You've come to the wrong shop.”
Cockie’s head was drooping, and his eyes were glassy.
But the need of dope drove him desperately to try
every dodge.
“ Hang it all,”’ he said with a little flash of spirit.
“You encouraged us to go on.”