THE GREY NIGHT. 
II9 
Hath grasped at the blackness of the ban : 
And thus do I crush it.  As the storm 
Whirls shrieking round thy ghastly form 
Thy spirit’s torture shall abate 
The bodily pangs of thy fearsome fate. 
Weak fool !  The fate of Arcady 
And the whole world — that hung on thee ! 
Hadst thou but made thee Emperor, 
And led thy legions into war ! 
Thou broken reed — a birth unclean, 
A life sucked up in sordid spleen, 
A death absurd, most foully wrought 
To the shape of thy father’s leper-thought. 
This be thy doom, that thou shalt see 
The curses that are born of thee ! 
Thou black bat that hast barred the sun 
From the sight of man, thou minion 
Of death and disease, of toil and want, 
Of slavery, knavery, greed and cant, 
Of bigotry, murder, hypocrisy 
— Speak thou the things that are seen of thee ! 
 
ISSA 
 
Canst thou not save me, Pan, 
And balk the bestial plan ?