Isn't this something you can easily do with a regex?
Something along the lines of:

my $text = ''; # put your complete works of Willie here
my $separator = '|'; # and your separator here

$text =~ s/[\^\n]([^\$\n]{25})/$1$separator/sg;

print $text;
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if( exists $aeons{strange} ){ die $death unless ( $death%2 ) }