Descend you weary-laden, descend in the dark earth, help me to finish swiftly my dread master's shroud, let each hem hold my pain, each corner hide a crow, a lean, voracious crow to peck his heart out bit by bit.

Crocodiles sweetly shut their lidded eyes, and yawned, for the blond meat had been quite good, and in slow rains new flesh would sprout once more and then be m…

I hate all virtues based on food and bloated bellies; though food and drink are good, I'm better slaked and fed by that inhuman flame which burns in our black …

Monarch of earth, I shall confess my secret craft: I've always fought to purify wild flame to light, and kindle whatever light I found to burst in flame.

Friends, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, dead Of plague, famine, and arrows: and the houses Battered unsafe by cannonades of stone Hurled in by the Ass…

'Who are you?' I asked the phantom, 'I am rest from Hate and Pride. 'I am friend to king and beggar, 'I am Alpha and Omega, 'I was councilor to Hagar 'But men …

I always wished I had died, and I still wish that, because I could have gotten the whole thing over with.