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 |