The Conqueror Worm

Listen to:

The Conqueror Worm

by Edgar Allan Poe

performed by Bob Gonzalez, rhapsode

Lo! ’t is 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 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.