Explore "The Decadent" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Among the virile hosts he passed along, / Conspicuous for an undetermined grace / Of sexless beauty. In his form and face / God's mighty purpose somehow had gone wrong. / Then on his loom, he wove a careful song, / Of sensuous threads; a wordy web of lace / Wherein the primal passions of the race / And his own sins made wonder for the throng.
A little pen prick opened up a vein, / And gave the finished mesh a crimson blot- / The last consummate touch of studied art. / But those who knew strong passion and keen pain, / Looked through and through the pattern and found not / One single great emotion of the heart.