Forum:Edgar Allen Poe, and a Chronology Clue.

Or Clew, as Wooster might put it.

Poe wrote a poem, which I quote in it's entirety her (public domain, of course)--

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.

-pub. 1843, Graham's Magazine

In 1845, Poe re-published it as part of his short story Ligeia, a story about possession & resurrection.

Both poem & short story seem well-suited for one of Professor LeMort's...prediliections?

Clearly, the American Isolation took place after Poe published; otherwise LeMort would not have been influenced by it.

--Bosda Di'Chi 18:20, March 21, 2012 (UTC)