Читать книгу Selections from Poe - Эдгар Аллан По, Edgar Allan Poe, Marta Fihel - Страница 26

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 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.