Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Thursday, January 11th, 2024.

God at that time.

2024, all year.

Today's poem is by Edgar Allan Poe, and it's called The Conqueror Worm.

I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and then read it one more time.

The Conqueror Worm.

Lo to the Gala Night within the lonesome latter years.

An angel throng, bewinged the dight in bales and drowned in tears,

sit in a theater 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 the high mutter and mumble low, hither and thither fly, mere puppets they who come and go,

admitting 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 forevermore by a crowd that sees it not, through a circle that ever

returneth into the self-same spot, and much of madness and more of sin

and horror the soul of the plot. I would see amid the mimic route a crawling shape intrude,

a blood-red thing that writhes from out the scenic solitude. It rides, it wriths with mortal pangs, the mimes become its food,

and seraph's sob at vermin fangs in human gore imbued.

Out, out are the lights, out all, and over each quivering form, the curtain, a funeral Paul, comes down with the rush of a storm, while the angels all pallid and one, uprising, unveiling a firm that the play is the tragedy, man, and its its hero the conqueror worm

It probably doesn't need to be said

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