worm

‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared. […]’

Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clung

Over the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung.

A woman’s shape, now lank and cold and blue,

The dwelling of the many-coloured worm,

Hung there […]

Don't try to run away, you little worm!

And when Paul had gathered a nomber of stickes, & laid them on the fyre, there came a viper out of the heat, and leapt on his hand. Now when the Barbarians sawe the worme hang on his hand, they said among them selues This man surely is a murtherer, whome, thogh he hathe escaped the sea, yet Vengeance hathe not suffred to liue.

The worm of conscience still begnaw thy soul!