The World’s Tragedy

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