The cruellest torture that a man can know,
Passing all Torquemada's racks, is said
To be the ceaseless, measured, leisured, slow
Drip-drop of water on the victim's head.

Surely it were a torment like in kind,
If in degree less maddening, to sit still
Under the leakage of this good man's mind,
The eternal trickle of this blameless quill.