13. 
Day after day the burning sun rolled on
Over the death-polluted land—­it came
Out of the east like fire, and fiercely shone
A lamp of Autumn, ripening with its flame
The few lone ears of corn;—­the sky became 3905
Stagnate with heat, so that each cloud and blast
Languished and died,—­the thirsting air did claim
All moisture, and a rotting vapour passed
From the unburied dead, invisible and fast.

14. 
First Want, then Plague came on the beasts; their food 3910
Failed, and they drew the breath of its decay. 
Millions on millions, whom the scent of blood
Had lured, or who, from regions far away,
Had tracked the hosts in festival array,
From their dark deserts; gaunt and wasting now, 3915
Stalked like fell shades among their perished prey;
In their green eyes a strange disease did glow,
They sank in hideous spasm, or pains severe and slow.

15. 
The fish were poisoned in the streams; the birds
In the green woods perished; the insect race 3920
Was withered up; the scattered flocks and herds
Who had survived the wild beasts’ hungry chase
Died moaning, each upon the other’s face
In helpless agony gazing; round the City
All night, the lean hyaenas their sad case 3925
Like starving infants wailed; a woeful ditty! 
And many a mother wept, pierced with unnatural pity.

16. 
Amid the aereal minarets on high,
The Ethiopian vultures fluttering fell
From their long line of brethren in the sky, 3930
Startling the concourse of mankind.—­Too well
These signs the coming mischief did foretell:—­
Strange panic first, a deep and sickening dread
Within each heart, like ice, did sink and dwell,
A voiceless thought of evil, which did spread 3935
With the quick glance of eyes, like withering lightnings shed.

17. 
Day after day, when the year wanes, the frosts
Strip its green crown of leaves, till all is bare;
So on those strange and congregated hosts
Came Famine, a swift shadow, and the air 3940
Groaned with the burden of a new despair;
Famine, than whom Misrule no deadlier daughter
Feeds from her thousand breasts, though sleeping there
With lidless eyes, lie Faith, and Plague, and Slaughter,
A ghastly brood; conceived of Lethe’s sullen water. 3945

18. 
There was no food, the corn was trampled down,
The flocks and herds had perished; on the shore
The dead and putrid fish were ever thrown;
The deeps were foodless, and the winds no more
Creaked with the weight of birds, but, as before 3950
Those winged things sprang forth, were void of shade;
The vines and orchards, Autumn’s golden store,
Were burned;—­so that the meanest food was weighed
With gold, and Avarice died before the god it made.