[by Edgar Allen Poe]
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Lo! 'tis agala night
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Within the lonesome latter years!
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An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
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In veils, and drowned in tears,
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Sit in a theatre, to see
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A play of hopes and fears,
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While the orchestra breathes fitfully
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The music of the spheres.
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Mimes, in form of God on high,
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Mutter and mumbled low,
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And hither and thither fly
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Mere puppets they,who come and go
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At biding of vast formless things
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That shift the scenary to and fro,
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Flapping from out of their Condor wings
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Invisible Woe!
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The motley drama-oh, be sure
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It shall not be forgot!
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With its Phantom chased for evermore,
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By a crowd that seize it not,
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Through a circle that ever returneth in
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To the self-same spot,
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And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
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And Horror the soul of the plot.
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But see, among the mimic rout
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A crawling shape intrude!
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A blood red thing that writhes from out
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The scenic solitude!
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It writhes! It writhes! With mortal pangs
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The mimes become its food,
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And the angels sob at vermin fangs
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In human gore
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imbuted.
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Out-out are the lights-out all!
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And, over each quivering form,
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The curtain, the funeral pall,
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Comes down with the rush of a storm,
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And the angels, all pallid and wan,
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Uprising, unveiling, affirm
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That the play is the tragedy "Man"
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and its hero the
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Conqueor worm.
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-----------------
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Abstract Thoughts
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| Odes Of Ecstasy |
