The Plague of Athens, which hapned in the second year of the Peloponnesian Warre · Thomas Sprat
IV.
Those _Africk_ Desarts strait were double Desarts grown, The rav’nous Beasts were left alone, The rav’nous beasts then first began To pity their old enemy Man, And blam’d the Plague for what they would themselves have done. Nor stay’d the cruel evil there, Nor could be long confin’d unto one Air, Plagues presently forsake The Wilderness which they themselves do make, Away the deadly breaths their journey take. Driven by a mighty wind, They a new booty and fresh forrage find. The loaded wind went swiftly on, And as it past was heard to sigh and groan. On _Ægypt_ next it seiz’d, Nor could but by a general ruine be appeas’d. _Ægypt_ in rage back on the South did look, And wondred thence should come th’ unhappy stroke, From whence before her fruitfulness she took. _Egypt_ did now curse and revile Those very Lands from whence she has her _Nile_; _Egypt_ now fear’d another _Hebrew_ God, Another Angels Hand, a second _Aarons_ Rod.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.