Death stalked the world with drawn blade –
With sharpened scythe, and ready spade
To dig new graves a thousand times
Per day, singing the requiems
To souls departing, souls now lost
To life and love. A heavy cost
Exacted from each country where
Death’s footsteps fall, as unaware
The people – stung by minute fleas –
Infected, swell with grim disease:
Turn black with plague, run wild, mad
With thirst and pain. The job Death had
To do was cull from over Earth
One half of all men brought to birth,
To lay them ‘neath the fresh-turned sod,
Return their new-freed souls to God.
Thus Death moved on to kill and slay –
Each morn another busy day.
Antipodean Writer 