I've seen enough of that. Though it was only Fancying made me see it, it was enough: I've seen the folk of the world yelling aghast, Scurrying to hide themselves. I want nought else Monstrous and dreadful.-- Merrick: What had roused 'em so? Some house afire? Huff: A huzzy flogged to death For her hard-faced adultery? Stranger (too intent to hear them): Oh to think of it! Talk, do, chatter some nonsense, else I'll think: And then I'm feeling like a grub that crawls All abroad in a dusty road; and high Above me, and shaking the ground beneath me, come Wheels of a thundering wain, right where I'm plodding. Sollers: Queer thinking, that. Stranger: And here's a queerer thing. I have a sort of lust in me, pushing me still Into that terrible way of thinking, like Black men in India lie them down and long To feel their holy wagon crack their spines. Merrick: Do you mean beetles? I've driven over scores, They sprawling on their backs, or standing mazed. I never knew they liked it. Sollers: He means frogs. I know what's in his mind. When I was young My mother would catch us frogs and set them down, Lapt in a screw of paper, in the ruts, And carts going by would quash 'em; and I'ld laugh, And yet be thinking, 'Suppose it was myself Twisted stiff in huge paper, and wheels Big as the wall of a barn treading me flat!' Huff: I know what's in his mind: just madness it is. He's lookt too hard at his fellows in the world; Sight of their monstrous hearts, like devils in cages, Has jolted all the gearing of his wits. It needs a tough brain, ay, a brain like mine, To pore on ugly sin and not go mad. Stranger: