Eight lines, and the capital letter again: Man is great, “and great is his river of soul” — but not always, “for there is a man” with neither conscience nor shame, “nor even the word Kindness,” whose life is “like a black cat’s” and for whom “everything around is darkness.” A miniature portrait of the person the previous poems have been arguing with. The poem’s darkness is ethical rather than atmospheric. Human greatness is acknowledged first, which makes the exception more disturbing: a person can possess the human form while abandoning conscience, shame and even the vocabulary of goodness. Darkness is therefore a failure of moral recognition.