THE CONQUEROR WORM
          
     Lo! ’tis 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
       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,
     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
       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,
     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
       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,
     And the angels sob at vermin fangs
       In human gore imbued.
    
     Out-out are the lights-out all!
       And, over each quivering form,
     The curtain, a funeral pall,
       Comes down with the rush of a storm,
     And the angels, all pallid and wan,
       Uprising, unveiling, affirm
     That the play is the tragedy “Man,”
       And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
    
    
                     – EDGAR ALLAN POE -

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