19. 
There was no corn—­in the wide market-place 3955
All loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold;
They weighed it in small scales—­and many a face
Was fixed in eager horror then:  his gold
The miser brought; the tender maid, grown bold
Through hunger, bared her scorned charms in vain; 3960
The mother brought her eldest born, controlled
By instinct blind as love, but turned again
And bade her infant suck, and died in silent pain.

20. 
Then fell blue Plague upon the race of man. 
’O, for the sheathed steel, so late which gave 3965
Oblivion to the dead, when the streets ran
With brothers’ blood!  O, that the earthquake’s grave
Would gape, or Ocean lift its stifling wave!’
Vain cries—­throughout the streets thousands pursued
Each by his fiery torture howl and rave, 3970
Or sit in frenzy’s unimagined mood,
Upon fresh heaps of dead; a ghastly multitude.

21. 
It was not hunger now, but thirst.  Each well
Was choked with rotting corpses, and became
A cauldron of green mist made visible 3975
At sunrise.  Thither still the myriads came,
Seeking to quench the agony of the flame,
Which raged like poison through their bursting veins;
Naked they were from torture, without shame,
Spotted with nameless scars and lurid blains, 3980
Childhood, and youth, and age, writhing in savage pains.

22. 
It was not thirst, but madness!  Many saw
Their own lean image everywhere, it went
A ghastlier self beside them, till the awe
Of that dread sight to self-destruction sent 3985
Those shrieking victims; some, ere life was spent,
Sought, with a horrid sympathy, to shed
Contagion on the sound; and others rent
Their matted hair, and cried aloud, ’We tread
On fire! the avenging Power his hell on earth has spread!’ 3990

23. 
Sometimes the living by the dead were hid. 
Near the great fountain in the public square,
Where corpses made a crumbling pyramid
Under the sun, was heard one stifled prayer
For life, in the hot silence of the air; 3995
And strange ’twas, amid that hideous heap to see
Some shrouded in their long and golden hair,
As if not dead, but slumbering quietly
Like forms which sculptors carve, then love to agony.

24. 
Famine had spared the palace of the king:—­ 4000
He rioted in festival the while,
He and his guards and priests; but Plague did fling
One shadow upon all.  Famine can smile
On him who brings it food, and pass, with guile
Of thankful falsehood, like a courtier gray, 4005
The house-dog of the throne; but many a mile
Comes Plague, a winged wolf, who loathes alway
The garbage and the scum that strangers make her prey.