He watched with all his organs of concern

How princes walk, what wives and children say;

Reopened old graves in his heart to learn

What laws the dead had died to disobey.

And came reluctantly to his conclusion:

"All the arm-chair philosophers are false;

To love another adds to the confusion;

The song of pity is the Devil's Waltz."

And bowed to fate and was successful so

That soon he was the king of all the creatures:

Yet, shaking in an autumn nightmare saw,

Approaching down a ruined corridor,

A figure with his own distorted features

That wept, and grew enormous, and cried Woe.