THE GREY NIGHT. 
I23 
In the stinking stye bemerded 
With the putrid excrement 
Of the marriage sacrament. 
Every scourge and sore and shame 
Blest in mine accursed name ! 
Love and beauty under ban ! 
Wit and wisdom barred to man ! 
Nature smirched by hideous lies ! 
Meanness lauded to the skies ! 
Pain and ruin and disease 
Praised, as if they made mine ease. 
Dead be dance and dream and revel ! 
Thought and courage, things of evil ! 
Corn and milk, wine and oil, 
The guerdon of degrading toil ! 
Life’s bright draught of honied leisure 
Soured to sick and tasteless pleasure. 
All the gracious grape degraded, 
To a fatuous foulness faded ; 
Ecstasy divinely deep 
Bartered for a brutal sleep 
In whose grunting crapulence 
They may forget the glory whence 
They came, and hide in a stinking slum