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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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