Helloween...

NATO style
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The Conqueror Worm.  EA Poe



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.


Mo' Poe