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 wing
              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,
            The seraphs 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,
            While the angels, all pallid and wan
              Uprising, unveiling, affirm
            That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
              And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
 
                        -THE END-

OTHER POE LINKS ON THE WEB:

Qrisse's Edgar Allan Poe Page(Down the valley of the Shadow!)

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