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 Wo!
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.
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