This is a diplomatic transcription of the text in The Poetical Works of 1782.
| Disease! Man’s dread, relentless foe, | ||
| Fell source of fear, and pain, and woe! | ||
| O say, on what ill-fated coast | ||
| They mourn thy tyrant reign the most? | ||
| On Java’s bogs, or Gambia’s sand, | ||
| Or Persia’s sultry southern strand; | ||
| Or Egypt’s annual-flooded plain, | ||
| Or Rome’s neglected, waste domain; | ||
| Or where her walls Byzantium rears, | ||
| And mosques and turrets crescent-crown’d, | ||
| And from his high serail the sultan hears | ||
| The wide Propontis’ beating waves resound. | ||
| I’ll ask no more — Our clime, tho’ fair, | ||
| Enough thy tyrant reign must share; | ||
| And lovers there, and friends, complain, | ||
| By Thee their friends and lovers slain: | ||
| And yet our Avarice and our Pride | ||
| Combine to spread thy mischiefs wide; | ||
| While that the captive wretch confines, | ||
| To hunger, cold, and filth resigns, — | ||
| And this the funeral pomp attends | ||
| To vaults, where mouldering corses lie, — | ||
| Amid foul air thy form unseen ascends, | ||
| And like a vulture hovers in the sky. |