Evil Influence by George MacDonald

'Tis not the violent hands alone that bring / The curse, the ravage, and the downward doom, / Although to these full oft the yawning tomb / Owes deadly surfeit; but a keener sting, / A more immortal agony will cling / To the half fashioned sin which would assume / Fair Virtue's garb; the eye that sows the gloom / With quiet seeds of Death henceforth to spring / What time the sun of passion burning fierce / Breaks through the kindly cloud of circumstance; / The bitter word, and the unkindly glance, / The crust and canker coming with the years, / Are liker Death than arrows and the lance / Which through the living heart at once doth pierce.