The Story
of Saville
The iterant rankling venom of an inquisitorial curse,
A special and general ban; and he deemed it better had been for him
To have undergone impossible pangs and tortures fiendish grim,
That one by one they had ravished forth each keen particular hair,
That redhot pincers had nipped his flesh and torn his nerve-cells bare,
That a thousand needles had stung his flesh with delicate devilish care.
If so they had spared his eyes,—his eyes, that were worth more then
To the wretched groveling world than the eyes of his fellow-men,
For Oh! in this visionless later day was any so quick as he
To snare and pinion the beauty that floats on turret and crag and tree,
That is as the sand on the beaches, the blossoms of foam on the sea,—
Yet he had perceived not alone this fairness out ward and free,
The heritage common to all mankind, that children or clowns may prize,
But the deeper intent, the message occult, the truth esoteric that lies
