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 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 the angels 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,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

Though we must die, I would not die 
When fields are brown and bleak, 
When wild-geese stream across the sky, 
And the cart-lodge timbers creak. 
For it would be so lone and drear 
To sleep beneath the snow, 
When children carol Christmas cheer, 
And Christmas rafters glow. 

Nor would I die, though we must die, 
When yeanlings blindly bleat, 
When the cuckoo laughs, and lovers sigh, 
And O, to live is sweet! 
When cowslips come again, and Spring 
Is winsome with their breath, 
And Life's in love with everything — 
With everything but Death. 

Let me not die, though we must die, 
When bowls are brimmed with cream, 
When milch-cows in the meadows lie, 
Or wade amid the stream; 
When dewy-dimpled roses smile 
To see the face of June, 
And lad and lass meet at the stile, 
Or roam beneath the moon. 

Since we must die, then let me die 
When flows the harvest ale, 
When the reaper lays the sickle by, 
And taketh down the flail; 
When all we prized, and all we planned, 
Is ripe and stored at last, 
And Autumn looks across the land, 
And ponders on the past: 
Then let me die.