By now the shepherds and neatherds all,Yea, even the sturdy guiders of curved ploughs,Began to sicken, and their bodies would lieHuddled within back-corners of their huts,Delivered by squalor and disease to death.O often and often couldst thou then have seenOn lifeless children lifeless parents prone,Or offspring on their fathers', mothers' corpseYielding the life. And into the city pouredO not in least part from the countrysideThat tribulation, which the peasantrySick, sick, brought thither, thronging from every quarter,Plague-stricken mob. All places would they crowd,All buildings too; whereby the more would deathUp-pile a-heap the folk so crammed in town.Ah, many a body thirst had dragged and rolledAlong the highways there was lying strewnBesides Silenus-headed water-fountains,-The life-breath choked from that too dear desireOf pleasant waters. Ah, everywhere alongThe open places of the populace,And along the highways, O thou mightest seeOf many a half-dead body the sagged limbs,Rough with squalor, wrapped around with rags,Perish from very nastiness, with naughtBut skin upon the bones, well-nigh alreadyBuried- in ulcers vile and obscene filth.All holy temples, too, of deitiesHad Death becrammed with the carcasses;And stood each fane of the Celestial OnesLaden with stark cadavers everywhere-Places which warders of the shrines had crowdedWith many a guest. For now no longer menDid mightily esteem the old Divine,The worship of the gods: the woe at handDid over-master. Nor in the city thenRemained those rites of sepulture, with whichThat pious folk had evermore been wontTo buried be. For it was wildered allIn wild alarms, and each and every oneWith sullen sorrow would bury his own dead,As present shift allowed. And sudden stressAnd poverty to many an awful actImpelled; and with a monstrous screaming theyWould, on the frames of alien funeral pyres,Place their own kin, and thrust the torch beneathOft brawling with much bloodshed round aboutRather than quit dead bodies loved in life.