Joy is a trick in the air; pleasure is merely contemptible, the dangled
Carrot the ass follows to market or precipice;
But limitary pain--the rock under the tower and the hewn coping
That takes thunder at the head of the turret--
Terrible and real. Therefore a mindless dervish carving himself
With knives will seem to have conquered the world.
From "Birth-Dues" by Robinson Jeffers.
The Flagellants, Pieter van Laer, c.1635
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