Too Much Bunting

"Think, now: if you have found a dead bird, not only dead, not only fallen, but full of maggots: what do you feel - more pity or more revulsion? Pity is for the moment of death, and the moments after. It changes when decay comes, with the creeping stench and the wriggling, munching scavengers. Returning later, though, you will see a shape of clean bone, a few feathers, an inoffensive symbol of what once lived. Nothing to make you shudder. It is clear then. But perhaps you find the analogy I have chosen for our dead affair rather gruesome - too unpleasant a comparison. It is not accidental. In you I see maggots close to the surface. You are eaten up by self-pity, crawling with unlovable pathos. If I were to touch you I should feel against my fingers fat, moist worm-skin. Do not ask me for charity now: go away until your bones are clean."

- “Advice to a discarded lover” by Fleur Adcock, taken from ‘Staying Alive’ 

"As you’ll answer it, take heed This Slave commit no Violence upon Himself. I’ve been deceiv’d. The Publick Safety Requires he should be more confin’d; and none, No not the Princes self, permitted to Confer with him. I’ll quit you to the King. Vile and ingrate! too late thou shalt repent The base Injustice thou hast done my Love: Yes, thou shalt know, spite of thy past Distress, And all those Ills which thou so long hast mourn’d; Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d."

- William Congreve, in The Mourning Bride, 1697