"Envy's a coal comes hissing hot from Hell"
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“Envy’s a coal comes hissing hot from Hell” doesn’t just condemn a vice; it makes it tactile. Bailey chooses “coal” over something grander like “flame” because coal is portable, graspable, and stubbornly slow to die. Envy isn’t a dramatic blaze that announces itself; it’s a live ember you can carry around in your pocket, warming your hand while it quietly burns through the fabric. The “hissing” sharpens the image into something almost bodily: heat meeting moisture, a spiteful sizzle. It suggests that envy is reactive and self-renewing, fed by proximity to whatever it wants. Get it near the object of desire and it flares.
The Hell reference does double work. On the surface, it’s moral architecture: envy as infernal, corrupting, disqualifying. Underneath, it’s psychological. Hell here is less a theological destination than an inner climate - a place of punishment you drag into ordinary life. The line implies a perverse intimacy: envy comes from Hell, but it also comes to you, small enough to hold, hot enough to hurt. That’s the mechanism of the sin: it feels like power (heat, energy, urgency) even as it damages the carrier first.
Context matters. Bailey, a Victorian-era poet, wrote in a culture that moralized interior life while also intensifying comparison: industrial wealth, social stratification, public reputation. In that world, envy is an everyday emotion with an apocalyptic aftertaste. The brilliance of the line is that it treats envy as both commonplace and damnable - a private ember with cosmic provenance.
The Hell reference does double work. On the surface, it’s moral architecture: envy as infernal, corrupting, disqualifying. Underneath, it’s psychological. Hell here is less a theological destination than an inner climate - a place of punishment you drag into ordinary life. The line implies a perverse intimacy: envy comes from Hell, but it also comes to you, small enough to hold, hot enough to hurt. That’s the mechanism of the sin: it feels like power (heat, energy, urgency) even as it damages the carrier first.
Context matters. Bailey, a Victorian-era poet, wrote in a culture that moralized interior life while also intensifying comparison: industrial wealth, social stratification, public reputation. In that world, envy is an everyday emotion with an apocalyptic aftertaste. The brilliance of the line is that it treats envy as both commonplace and damnable - a private ember with cosmic provenance.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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