On the Nature of Things Part 17

In those affairs, O awfullest of all, O pitiable most was this, was this: Whoso once saw himself in that disease Entangled, ay, as d.a.m.ned unto death, Would lie in wanhope, with a sullen heart, Would, in fore-vision of his funeral, Give up the ghost, O then and there. For, lo, At no time did they cease one from another To catch contagion of the greedy plague,-- As though but woolly flocks and horned herds; And this in chief would heap the dead on dead: For who forbore to look to their own sick, O these (too eager of life, of death afeard) Would then, soon after, slaughtering Neglect Visit with vengeance of evil death and base-- Themselves deserted and forlorn of help.

But who had stayed at hand would perish there By that contagion and the toil which then A sense of honour and the pleading voice Of weary watchers, mixed with voice of wail Of dying folk, forced them to undergo.

This kind of death each n.o.bler soul would meet.

The funerals, uncompanioned, forsaken, Like rivals contended to be hurried through.

And men contending to ensepulchre Pile upon pile the throng of their own dead: And weary with woe and weeping wandered home; And then the most would take to bed from grief.

Nor could be found not one, whom nor disease Nor death, nor woe had not in those dread times Attacked.

By now the shepherds and neatherds all, Yea, even the st.u.r.dy guiders of curved ploughs, Began to sicken, and their bodies would lie Huddled within back-corners of their huts, Delivered by squalor and disease to death.

O often and often couldst thou then have seen On lifeless children lifeless parents p.r.o.ne, Or offspring on their fathers', mothers' corpse Yielding the life. And into the city poured O not in least part from the countryside That tribulation, which the peasantry Sick, sick, brought thither, thronging from every quarter, Plague-stricken mob. All places would they crowd, All buildings too; whereby the more would death Up-pile a-heap the folk so crammed in town.

Ah, many a body thirst had dragged and rolled Along the highways there was lying strewn Besides Silenus-headed water-fountains,-- The life-breath choked from that too dear desire Of pleasant waters. Ah, everywhere along The open places of the populace, And along the highways, O thou mightest see Of many a half-dead body the sagged limbs, Rough with squalor, wrapped around with rags, Perish from very nastiness, with naught But skin upon the bones, well-nigh already Buried--in ulcers vile and obscene filth.

All holy temples, too, of deities Had Death becrammed with the carca.s.ses; And stood each fane of the Celestial Ones Laden with stark cadavers everywhere-- Places which warders of the shrines had crowded With many a guest. For now no longer men Did mightily esteem the old Divine, The worship of the G.o.ds: the woe at hand Did over-master. Nor in the city then Remained those rites of sepulture, with which That pious folk had evermore been wont To buried be. For it was wildered all In wild alarms, and each and every one With sullen sorrow would bury his own dead, As present shift allowed. And sudden stress And poverty to many an awful act Impelled; and with a monstrous screaming they Would, on the frames of alien funeral pyres, Place their own kin, and thrust the torch beneath Oft brawling with much bloodshed round about Rather than quit dead bodies loved in life.