(By Edgar Allen Poe) 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.