Edgar Allan Poe's The Conqueror Worm: The play is the tragedy, ‘Man’ And its hero, the Conqueror Worm - Folkswitch: The Romantic Poets Meet Wyrd Folk

Poe’s The Conqueror Worm can be found in his tale Ligeia, a story of death, resurrection, opium abuse, more death and madness. The poem depicts a performance of mimes, controlled by vast, shapeless forms offstage. High above angels watch and weep, and at last an evil, formless shape crawls center stage and eats the hapless mimes, and as the curtain comes down, the title of the play, Man is revealed, and the hero, The Conqueror Worm introduced.

Poe’s mimes represent man, who given the illusion of self determination, are in fact, ruled by dark forces unseen and unstoppable. Even those deities and their minions in which we place hope, in Poe’s The Conqueror Worm are helpless to intervene. Poe proclaims we all meet the same fate, certain and hideous death, and the inevitable decomposition of what remains of us.

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Edgar Allan Poe’s The Conqueror Worm

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 Wo!

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.

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