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The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allan Poe

Analysis

"The conqueror Worm" is a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe. The title of this poem was incorporated into his short story "Ligeia" later in Poe's writing career. This poem is about how pointless life is since it all leads to death in the end.

This writing consists of five stanzas with each stanza containing eight lines. Here, Poe rhymes each even lines and odd lines in pairs. For example, ABAB.

Poem

The Conqueror Worm
By 

Lo! 'tis 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 Woe!

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.

Published in Graham's Magazine in .
Next: Dreamland

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Nationality
American

Literary Movement
Romanticism, 19th Century

Subjects
Life, Death