My soul looked down from a vague height with Death, As unremembering how I rose or why, And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth¹, Gray, cratered² like the moon with hollow woe³, And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plaques⁴.

    Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire, There moved thin caterpillars⁵, slowly uncoiled. It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugs Of ditches, where they writhed⁶ and shrivelled, killed.

    By them had slimy paths been trailed and scraped Round myriad⁷ warts⁸ that might be little hills.

    From gloom's last dregs these long-strung creatures crept, And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes.

    （And smell came up from those foul⁹ openings As out of mouths, or deep wounds deepening.）

    On dithering feet upgathered, more and more, Brown strings¹⁰ towards strings of gray, with bristling¹¹ spines¹², All migrants from green fields, intent on mire¹³.

    Those that were gray, of more abundant spawns¹⁴, Ramped¹⁵ on the rest and ate them and were eaten.

    I saw their bitten backs curve, loop, and straighten, I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten¹⁶.

    Whereat, in terror what that sight might mean, I reeled and shivered earthward like a feather.

    And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan. And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid Its bruises¹⁷ in the earth, but crawled no further, Showed me its feet, the feet of many men, And the fresh-severed head of it, my head.