The Plague of Athens, which hapned in the second year of the Peloponnesian Warre · Thomas Sprat
XIX.
Mountains of bones and carcases, The street, the Market-place possess, Threatning to raise a new _Acropolis_. Here lies a mother and her child, The infant suck’d as yet, and smil’d, But strait by its own food was kill’d. There parents hugg’d their children last, Here parting lovers last embrac’d, But yet not parting neither, They both expir’d and went away together. Here pris’ners in the Dungeon die, And gain a two-fold liberty, They meet and thank their pains Which them from double chains Of body and of iron free. Here others poyson’d by the scent Which from corrupted bodies went, Quickly return the death they did receive, And death to others give; Themselves now dead the air pollute the more, For which they others curs’d before, Their bodies kill all that come near, And even after death they all are murderers here.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.