—­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.

Maid Alice and maid Margaret
In the fields have built them a bower
Of reedmace and rushes fine,
Fenced with sharp albespyne;
Pretty maids hid in the nest; and yet
Yours is one death, and one hour! 
Priest and peasant and lord
By the swift, soft stroke of the air,
By a silent invisible sword,
In plough-field or banquet, fall: 
The watchers are flat on the wall:—­
Through city and village and valley
The sweet-voiced herald of prayer
Is dumb in the towers; the throng
To the shrine pace barefoot; and where
Blazed out from the choir a glory of song,
God’s altar is lightless and bare. 
Is there no pity in earth or sky? 
The burden of England, who shall say? 
Half the giant oak is riven away,
And the green leaves yearn for the leaves that die. 
Will the whole world drink of the dragon’s breath? 
It is the cup, men cry, the cup of God’s fury that cometh! 
’Tis the Black Death, Lord help us! 
The black black Death.

In England is heard a moan,
A bitter lament and a sore,
Rachel lamenting her dead,
And will not be comforted
For the little faces for ever gone,
The feet from the silent floor. 
And a cry goes up from the land,
Take from us in mercy, O God,
Take from us the weight of Thy hand,
The cup and the wormwood of woe! 
’Neath the terrible barbs of Thy bow
This England, this once Thy beloved,
Is water’d with life-blood for rain;
The bones of her children are white,
As flints on the Golgotha plain;
Not slain as warriors by warriors in fight,
By the arrows of Heaven slain. 
We have sinn’d:  we lift up our souls to Thee,
O Lord God eternal on high: 
Thou who gavest Thyself to die,
Saviour, save! to Thy feet we flee:—­
Snatch from the hell and the Enemy’s breath,
From the Prince of the Air, from the terror by night that cometh:—­
From the Black Death, Christ save us! 
The black black Death!

That foul monster; The Lernaean Hydra of Greek legend.

From the marshes; The drought which preceded the plague in England, and may have predisposed to its reception, was followed by mist, in which the people fancied they saw the disease palpably advancing.

From Cathaya; The plague was heard of in Central Asia in 1333; it reached Constantinople in 1347.

The City of Flowers; Florence, where the ravages of the plague were immortalized in the Decamerone of Boccaccio.

The pest boil; Seems to have been the enlarged and discharging gland by which the specific blood-poison of the plague relieved itself.  A ’muddy glistening’ of the eye is noticed as one of the symptoms.