The Conqueror Worm: A Poem By Edgar Allan Poe

Описание: "The Conqueror Worm" is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe is famous for gothic horror stories like The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado, and for his poem The Raven.
This poem is big and dramatic --- human life is cast as a performance, watched by an audience of angels. But, human life is a tragedy, which ends with the Hero, the Worm that kills and consumes and also writhes. If you noticed that the video spells the title as "Conquerer" instead of "Conqueror" no you didn't. But also it's commentary on the degradation and fluidity of language so it's fine. I would never make a mistake.

The full text:
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.