Lo!   ’tis a gala night

An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

Sit in a theatre, to see

While the orchestra breathes fitfully

Mimes, in the form of God on high,

And hither and thither fly—

At bidding of vast formless things

Flapping from out their Condor wings

That motley drama—oh, be sure

With its Phantom chased for evermore

Through a circle that ever returneth in

And much of Madness, and more of Sin,

But see, amid the mimic rout,

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs

And seraphs sob at vermin fangs

Out—out are the lights—out all!

The curtain, a funeral pall,

While the angels, all pallid and wan,

That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”