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The End Poem is the text that scrolls after you defeat the Ender Dragon and step into the exit portal. It is a quiet conversation between two voices about the player, dreaming and reality, and it closes with the line You are the player. Wake up. This reader shows it in its true in-game colors and lets you put your own name into the dialogue.
The poem plays once the first time you beat the dragon, right after the credits, and you can watch it again on any later trip through the portal. The two narrators speak in different colors: dark green and dark aqua. A few lines use Minecraft's obfuscated formatting, where the letters scramble endlessly so the words cannot be read, marking ideas the player is not yet ready to grasp.
The reading view above renders the exact text from the game's data files, unaltered, with each colored run drawn in the same hue the game uses. Switch to the Post-credits tab for the final message, or the Credits tab for the full list of names that scrolls between them.
The End Poem was written by Irish author Julian Gough in 2011, after Minecraft creator Markus Persson, known as Notch, asked him for an ending to the game. Gough delivered the piece and it has shipped with every copy of Minecraft since. In 2022 he announced that he had released the poem into the public domain, telling its story publicly for the first time.
Because it appears at the literal end of the game's main goal, the poem has become one of Minecraft's most quoted pieces of writing. Lines such as You are the player. Wake up. are read as a message from the game to the person holding the controller, not just to the character on screen.
The End Poem is the block of text that scrolls up the screen after you defeat the Ender Dragon and walk into the exit portal in the End dimension. It takes the form of a conversation between two unseen speakers discussing the player, the nature of dreaming and reality, and ends with the line You are the player. Wake up. It plays once after the credits the first time you beat the dragon, and you can watch it again from any return trip through the portal.
It was written by Irish author Julian Gough in 2011, after Notch (Markus Persson) asked him to write an ending for the game. Gough delivered the piece, titled End Poem, and it has shipped with Minecraft ever since. In 2022 he announced that he had released the poem into the public domain.
The game stores a PLAYERNAME placeholder in the poem text and swaps in your username when it plays, so lines like the one naming the player feel personal. This reader does the same: type any name into the box and it is woven into the dialogue exactly where the game would place it.
Those passages use Minecraft's obfuscated formatting code, which constantly cycles through random characters of the same length so the words can never be read. They appear where the speakers refer to concepts the player is not yet meant to understand. This reader recreates that scrambling effect, so the garbled runs animate just as they do in-game.
After the End Poem and credits finish scrolling, a final white line appears: a short quote about not being disappointed by the things you did not do, attributed to Unknown. It is the last text shown before control returns to you. You can read it on the Post-credits tab here.
Read more of the game's text, or browse all Minecraft tools:
