Diary of a Drug Fiend

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.”