What is this, men cry in their fear, what is this that cometh?
'Tis the Black Death, they whisper:
The black black Death!

The heart of man at the name
To a ball of ice shrinks in,
With hope, surrendering life:--
The husband looks on the wife,
Reading the tokens of doom in the frame,
The pest-boil hid in the skin,
And flees and leaves her to die.
Fear-sick, the mother beholds
In her child's pure crystalline eye
A dull shining, a sign of despair.
Lo, the heavens are poison, not air;
And they fall as when lambs in the pasture
With a moan that is hardly a moan,
Drop, whole flocks, where they stand;
And the mother lays her, alone,
Slain by the touch of her nursing hand,
Where the household before her is strown.
--Earth, Earth, open and cover thy dead!
For they are smitten and fall who bear
The corpse to the grave with a prayerless prayer,
And thousands are crush'd in the common bed:--
--Is it Hell that breathes with an adder's breath?
Is it the day of doom, men cry, the Judge that cometh?
--'Tis the Black Death, God help us!
The black black Death.