By Philip Freneau
Hot, dry winds forever blowing,
Dead men to the grave-yards going:
Constant hearses,
Funeral verses;
Oh! what plagues—there is no knowing!
Priests retreating from their pulpits!—
Some in hot, and some in cold fits
In bad temper,
Off they scamper,
Leaving us—unhappy culprits!
I’m going to have a go at the suggestion to write the last 2 stanzas of this; it’s a very jolly rhyming pattern so will be hard to make a serious poem of it…. but an interesting idea.
Freneau, dubbed the poet of the American Revolution, was responding to the 1793 outbreak of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia.