It opens with a playful image from a Christmas pantomime: scowling goblins and bloated tyrants suddenly shed their grotesque costumes at the prompter’s cue, turning into flower-bedecked fairies. Stevenson uses this theatrical trick as a quiet metaphor for human existence. In life, he suggests, we all move through our days wearing borrowed, often ugly parts — lust for fame, awkward virtue, fear, or cruelty — like actors in a “travesty of man.” But the mood isn’t despairing. The speaker feels a tender, almost mischievous reassurance. Death doesn’t arrive as a horror; she steps forward like the fairy queen in the transformation scene. In an instant, she frees us from those false selves, all the shame and tyranny falling away. The final lines breathe calm and hope: each of us, at last genuine and unburdened, lies down in a country where we are completely loved and understood.
Behold, As Goblins Dark Of Mien — Summary
Behold, as goblins dark of mien And portly tyrants dyed with crime Change, in the transformation scene, At Christmas, in the pantomime,
Instanter, at the prompter's cough, The fairy bonnets them, and they Throw their abhorred carbuncles off And blossom like the flowers in May.
— So mankind, to angelic eyes, So, through the scenes of life below, In life's ironical disguise, A travesty of man, ye go:
But fear not: ere the curtain fall, Death in the transformation scene Steps forward from her pedestal, Apparent, as the fairy Queen;
And coming, frees you in a trice From all your lendings - lust of fame, Ungainly virtue, ugly vice, Terror and tyranny and shame.
So each, at last himself, for good In that dear country lays him down, At last beloved and understood And pure in feature and renown.