| I. Red Death
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| It was a time when life was short
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| Long devastated was the land
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| Never had there ever been
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| A more fatal plague against all man
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| Pungent pain, sudden faintness
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| Your energy begins to fade
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| As you stand there somewhat daunted
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| You know 'Red Death' is on it’s way
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| Blood, blood, blood and more blood
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| Profuse bleeding at the pores
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| You watch your blood slowly sizzle
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| As your flesh dissolves some more
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| Screams of anguish, blood still flowing
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| Pollutes the ground a rotten red
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| Your time has come, you must meet your maker
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| As you slip into the valley of the shadow of death
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| II. |
| The Prince’s Master Plan
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| All men feared this great disaster
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| But the valiant Prince had the only answer
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| For his majesty and his chosen ones
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| The inception of new life would free them of contagion
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| Magnificent it was this structure of seclusion
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| Surrounded by these walls so massive yet elusive
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| The gates were welded shut impervious to those forsaken
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| Never letting go of the souls that were taken
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| There was beauty, there was wine
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| Ambrosia and sweet nectar
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| Flowing from within
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| All appliances of pleasure
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| Inside the Master-Plan
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| Providing noble lunacy
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| Outside the palace gates
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| 'Red Death' just sits and waits for you
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| Narration:
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| It was toward the close of the fifth or
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| Sixth month of his seclusion, and while the
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| Pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that
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| The Prince Prospreo entertained his thousand
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| Friends at a masked ball of the most unusual
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| Magnificence… Edgar Allen Poe (1809−1849)
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| III. |
| The Masquerade including the Twelfth Hour and Return of the Red Death
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| Bizzare it was seven chambers
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| Held this jubilee except for one
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| It stood alone, the western wing
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| Where no one shared it’s offerings
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| Blood tinted panes, brazier or fire
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| Projects it’s rays
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| A clock stands tall, ominous
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| It warns of death so soon to be
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| So loud, so deep the guests pay heed
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| The dissonant ring of ebony
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| The crowd goes pale as darkness
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| Shrouds the maskers in their revelry
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| Then as the echos ceased
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| A light laughter spread through the assembly
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| And all is well
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| Until the next chiming of old ebony
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| The ebony clock struck the twelfth hour
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| And everyting ceased as the revellers cowered
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| The pendulum swings all still, all silent
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| Save the voice of old ebony
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| As the last chime died and sunk into silence
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| Soon it was felt a presence so strange
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| Tall and gaunt who is this masked figure
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| Shrouded in habiliments of the grave?
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| His blood splattered mask bore a striking resemblence
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| The countenance of a rigid corpse
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| He stalked to and fro in a slow, solemn movement
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| Enraging the Duke, invasion of his sanctuary
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| 'Seize him, unmask him, ' commanded the prince
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| 'Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery?
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| You’ll hang at sunrise! |
| '
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| Not a person came forth it seemed like all was lost
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| As the intruder make his way unimpeded
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| An anon he went on trugged through each chamber
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| Where the music once swelled and the dreams lived on and on
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| The prince in pursuit dagger drawn aloft
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| As the figure retreats to the seventh chamber
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| He suddenly turns, a piercing sharp cry
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| Now the Prince lay dead in the hall of the velvet…
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| Then summoning the wild courage of despair
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| A throng of revellers at once threw themselves
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| Into the black apartment, and seizing the mummer
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| Whose tall dark figure stood erect and motionless
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| Within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped
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| In unutterable horror at finding the grave
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| Cerements and corpse-like mask, which they
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| Handled with so violent a rudeness, untenated
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| By any tangible form
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| And now was acknowlegded the presence
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| Of the Red Death. |
| He had come as a thief
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| In the night and one by one droppd the revellers
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| In the blood-bedewed halls of their revel
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| And died each in the despairing posture of his fall
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| As the life of the ebony clock went out
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| With that the last of the gay
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| And the flames of the tripods expired. |
| And Darkness
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| And Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all…
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| Edgar Allen Poe (1809−1849) |