StoryTitle("caps", "The Conqueror Worm") ?>
PoemStart() ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Lo! 'tis a gala night", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Within the lonesome latter years!", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "An angel throng, bewinged, bedight", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "In veils, and drowned in tears,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Sit in a theatre, to see", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "A play of hopes and fears,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "While the orchestra breathes fitfully", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "The music of the spheres.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Mimes, in the form of God on high,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Mutter and mumble low,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And hither and thither fly—", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Mere puppets they, who come and go", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "At bidding of vast formless things", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "That shift the scenery to and fro,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Flapping from out their Condor wings", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Invisible Woe!", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "That motley drama—oh, be sure", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "It shall not be forgot!", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "With its Phantom chased for evermore,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "By a crowd that seize it not,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Through a circle that ever returneth in", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "To the self-same spot,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And much of Madness, and more of Sin,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "And Horror the soul of the plot.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "But see, amid the mimic rout", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "A crawling shape intrude!", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "A blood-red thing that writhes from out", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "The scenic solitude!", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "The mimes become its food,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "And seraphs sob at vermin fangs", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "In human gore imbued.", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "Out—out are the lights—out all!", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "And, over each quivering form,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "The curtain, a funeral pall,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Comes down with the rush of a storm,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "While the angels, all pallid and wan,", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "Uprising, unveiling, affirm", "") ?>
PoemLine("L0", "", "That the play is the tragedy, \"Man,\"", "") ?>
PoemLine("L2", "", "And its hero the Conqueror Worm. ", "") ?>
PoemEnd() ?>