The Conqueror Worm
By: Edgar Allen Poe
| LO! 't is a gala night | |
| Within the lonesome latter years. | |
| An angel throng, bewinged, bedight | |
| In veils, and drowned in tears, | |
| Sit in a theatre to see | 5 |
| A play of hopes and fears, | |
| While the orchestra breathes fitfully | |
| The music of the spheres. | |
| Mimes, in the form of God on high, | |
| Mutter and mumble low, | 10 |
| And hither and thither fly; | |
| Mere puppets they, who come and go | |
| At bidding of vast formless things | |
| That shift the scenery to and fro, | |
| Flapping from out their condor wings | 15 |
| Invisible Woe. | |
| That motley drama—oh, be sure | |
| It shall not be forgot! | |
| With its Phantom chased for evermore | |
| By a crowd that seize it not, | 20 |
| Through a circle that ever returneth in | |
| To the self-same spot; | |
| And much of Madness, and more of Sin, | |
| And Horror the soul of the plot. | |
| But see amid the mimic rout | 25 |
| A crawling shape intrude: | |
| A blood-red thing that writhes from out | |
| The scenic solitude! | |
| It writhes—it writhes!—with mortal pangs | |
| The mimes become its food, | 30 |
| And over each quivering form | |
| In human gore imbued. | |
| Out—out are the lights—out all! | |
| And over each quivering form | |
| The curtain, a funeral pall, | 35 |
| Comes down with the rush of a storm, | |
| While the angels, all pallid and wan, | |
| Uprising, unveiling, affirm | |
| That the play is the tragedy, "Man," | |
| And its hero, the Conqueror Worm. | 40 |
