On the Nature of Things

THE PLAGUE ATHENS

     'Twas such a manner of disease, 'twas such     Mortal miasma in Cecropian lands     Whilom reduced the plains to dead men's bones,     Unpeopled the highways, drained of citizens     The Athenian town. For coming from afar,     Rising in lands of Aegypt, traversing     Reaches of air and floating fields of foam,     At last on all Pandion's folk it swooped;     Whereat by troops unto disease and death     Were they o'er-given. At first, they'd bear about     A skull on fire with heat, and eyeballs twain     Red with suffusion of blank glare. Their throats,     Black on the inside, sweated oozy blood;     And the walled pathway of the voice of man     Was clogged with ulcers; and the very tongue,     The mind's interpreter, would trickle gore,     Weakened by torments, tardy, rough to touch.     Next when that Influence of bane had chocked,     Down through the throat, the breast, and streamed had     E'en into sullen heart of those sick folk,     Then, verily, all the fences of man's life     Began to topple. From the mouth the breath     Would roll a noisome stink, as stink to heaven     Rotting cadavers flung unburied out.     And, lo, thereafter, all the body's strength     And every power of mind would languish, now     In very doorway of destruction.     And anxious anguish and ululation (mixed     With many a groan) companioned alway     The intolerable torments. Night and day,     Recurrent spasms of vomiting would rack     Alway their thews and members, breaking down     With sheer exhaustion men already spent.     And yet on no one's body couldst thou mark     The skin with o'er-much heat to burn aglow,     But rather the body unto touch of hands     Would offer a warmish feeling, and thereby     Show red all over, with ulcers, so to say,     Inbranded, like the "sacred fires" o'erspread     Along the members. The inward parts of men,     In truth, would blaze unto the very bones;     A flame, like flame in furnaces, would blaze     Within the stomach. Nor couldst aught apply     Unto their members light enough and thin     For shift of aid—but coolness and a breeze     Ever and ever. Some would plunge those limbs     On fire with bane into the icy streams,     Hurling the body naked into the waves;     Many would headlong fling them deeply down     The water-pits, tumbling with eager mouth     Already agape. The insatiable thirst     That whelmed their parched bodies, lo, would make     A goodly shower seem like to scanty drops.     Respite of torment was there none. Their frames     Forspent lay prone. With silent lips of fear     Would Medicine mumble low, the while she saw     So many a time men roll their eyeballs round,     Staring wide-open, unvisited of sleep,     The heralds of old death. And in those months     Was given many another sign of death:     The intellect of mind by sorrow and dread     Deranged, the sad brow, the countenance     Fierce and delirious, the tormented ears     Beset with ringings, the breath quick and short     Or huge and intermittent, soaking sweat     A-glisten on neck, the spittle in fine gouts     Tainted with colour of crocus and so salt,     The cough scarce wheezing through the rattling throat.     Aye, and the sinews in the fingered hands     Were sure to contract, and sure the jointed frame     To shiver, and up from feet the cold to mount     Inch after inch: and toward the supreme hour     At last the pinched nostrils, nose's tip     A very point, eyes sunken, temples hollow,     Skin cold and hard, the shuddering grimace,     The pulled and puffy flesh above the brows!—     O not long after would their frames lie prone     In rigid death. And by about the eighth     Resplendent light of sun, or at the most     On the ninth flaming of his flambeau, they     Would render up the life. If any then     Had 'scaped the doom of that destruction, yet     Him there awaited in the after days     A wasting and a death from ulcers vile     And black discharges of the belly, or else     Through the clogged nostrils would there ooze along     Much fouled blood, oft with an aching head:     Hither would stream a man's whole strength and flesh.     And whoso had survived that virulent flow     Of the vile blood, yet into thews of him     And into his joints and very genitals     Would pass the old disease. And some there were,     Dreading the doorways of destruction     So much, lived on, deprived by the knife     Of the male member; not a few, though lopped     Of hands and feet, would yet persist in life,     And some there were who lost their eyeballs: O     So fierce a fear of death had fallen on them!     And some, besides, were by oblivion     Of all things seized, that even themselves they knew     No longer. And though corpse on corpse lay piled     Unburied on ground, the race of birds and beasts     Would or spring back, scurrying to escape     The virulent stench, or, if they'd tasted there,     Would languish in approaching death. But yet     Hardly at all during those many suns     Appeared a fowl, nor from the woods went forth     The sullen generations of wild beasts—     They languished with disease and died and died.     In chief, the faithful dogs, in all the streets     Outstretched, would yield their breath distressfully     For so that Influence of bane would twist     Life from their members. Nor was found one sure     And universal principle of cure:     For what to one had given the power to take     The vital winds of air into his mouth,     And to gaze upward at the vaults of sky,     The same to others was their death and doom.     In those affairs, O awfullest of all,     O pitiable most was this, was this:     Whoso once saw himself in that disease     Entangled, ay, as damned 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 nobler 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 sturdy 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 prone,     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 carcasses;     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 gods: 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.