[by Edgar Allen Poe]



Lo! 'tis agala 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 form of God on high,

Mutter and mumbled low,

And hither and thither fly

Mere puppets they,who come and go

At biding of vast formless things

That shift the scenary to and fro,

Flapping from out of their Condor wings

Invisible Woe!



The 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, among 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

imbuted.



Out-out are the lights-out all!

And, over each quivering form,

The curtain, the 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

Conqueor worm.