Lo! 'tis agala 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 form of God on high,
Mutter and mumbled low,
And hither and thither fly
Mere puppets they,who come and go
At biding of vast formless things
That shift the scenary to and fro,
Flapping from out of their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!
The 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, among 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
imbuted.
Out-out are the lights-out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, the 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
Conqueor worm.
