HOME | DD

Description
Illustration/cover based on a poem by Edgar Allan Poe

    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.

Description
Illustration/cover based on a poem by Edgar Allan Poe

    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.