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Edward Farr, ed. Select Poetry of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. 1845.

A Description of Fever

LI. George Chapman

UP to her left side leapt infernall Death,

His head hid in a cloud of sensuall breath;

By her sat furious anguish, pale despight,

Murmure and sorrowe, and possest affright,

Yellow corruption, marrow-eating care;

Languor, chill trembling, fits irregulare;

Inconstant choller, public-voic’d complaint,

Relentles rigor, and confusion faint;

Frantick distemper, and hare-ey’d unrest,

And short-breath’d thirst, with th’ ever burning breast.

A wreath of adders bound her trenched browes,

Where torment ambush’d lay with all her throws;

Marmarian lyons, fring’d with flaming manes,

Drew this grym furie, and her brood of banes:

Then burnt her bloud-shot eyes, her temples yet

Were cold as ice, her neck all drown’d in swet;

Palenes spred all her breast, her life’s heat stung;

The mind’s interpreter, her scorched tongue,

Flow’d with blew poison; from her yawning mouth

Rheums fell, like spouts fil’d from the stormy south;

Her swoln throte rattled, warm’d with life’s last spark,

And in her salt jawes painfull coughs did bark;

Her teeth were stain’d with rust; her sluttish hand

She held out, reeking like a new-quencht brand;

In her left hand a quenchless fire did glow,

And in her right palm freez’d Sithonian snow.