'The Pale Panther' is one of the 'thumbnail nightmares', as MacNeice called them, in his last collection, The Burning Perch. It is not only one of the most terrible of the nightmares, but also one in which the mood of bleak despair is not balanced by any of his old sardonic optimism (though there is bitter wit), or any of the stoical determination of, say, his last-published poem, 'Thalassa', with its courageous message:

            Our end is Life. Put out to sea.

Our end is anything but Life in 'The Pale Panther'. Worse, it is not even Death.

MacNeice confessed he was 'taken aback by the high proportion of sombre pieces' in this collection, but could only say that 'they happened'…. If he was the spokesman for the '30's in ['An Eclogue for Christmas'], he was no less the spokesman for the '60's in 'The Pale Panther'...