Summary: Edgar Allan Poe’s Birthday Special:<br> The apotheosis of the human condition.<br> ⁓The Voice before the Void<br> “The Conqueror Worm”<br> Edgar Allan Poe<br> <a href="https://i2.wp.com/www.thevoicebeforethevoid.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/The-Conqueror-Worm-by-Edgar-Allan-illustration-by-W-Heath-Robinson-1900.jpg?ssl=1"></a>Lo! ’tis a gala night<br> Within the lonesome latter years!<br> An angel throng, bewinged, bedight<br> In veils, and drowned in tears,<br> Sit in a theatre, to see<br> A play of hopes and fears,<br> While the orchestra breathes fitfully<br> The music of the spheres.<br> Mimes, in the form of God on high,<br> Mutter and mumble low,<br> And hither and thither fly—<br> Mere puppets they, who come and go<br> At bidding of vast formless things<br> That shift the scenery to and fro,<br> Flapping from out their Condor wings<br> Invisible Wo!<br> That motley drama—oh, be sure<br> It shall not be forgot!<br> With its Phantom chased for evermore,<br> By a crowd that seize it not,<br> Through a circle that ever returneth in<br> To the self-same spot,<br> And much of Madness, and more of Sin,<br> And Horror the soul of the plot.<br> But see, amid the mimic rout<br> A crawling shape intrude!<br> A blood-red thing that writhes from out<br> The scenic solitude!<br> It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs<br> The mimes become its food,<br> And the angels sob at vermin fangs<br> In human gore imbued.<br> Out—out are the lights—out all!<br> And, over each quivering form,<br> The curtain, a funeral pall,<br> Comes down with the rush of a storm,<br> And the angels, all pallid, and wan,<br> Uprising, unveiling, affirm<br> That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”<br> And its hero the Conqueror Worm.<br>
