Oh how shall I its deeds recount

Or measure the untold amount

Of ills that it has done?

From China's bright celestial land

E'en to Arabia's thirsty sand

It journeyed with the sun.



O'er miles of bleak Siberia's plains

Where Russian exiles toil in chains

It moved with noiseless tread;

And as it slowly glided by

There followed it across the sky

The spirits of the dead.



The Ural peaks by it were scaled

And every bar and barrier failed

To turn it from its way;

Slowly and surely on it came,

Heralded by its awful fame,

Increasing day by day.



On Moscow's fair and famous town

Where fell the first Napoleon's crown

It made a direful swoop;

The rich, the poor, the high, the low

Alike the various symptoms know,

Alike before it droop.



Nor adverse winds, nor floods of rain

Might stay the thrice-accursed bane;

And with unsparing hand,

Impartial, cruel and severe

It travelled on allied with fear

And smote the fatherland.



Fair Alsace and forlorn Lorraine,

The cause of bitterness and pain

In many a Gaelic breast,

Receive the vile, insatiate scourge,

And from their towns with it emerge

And never stay nor rest.



And now Europa groans aloud,

And 'neath the heavy thunder-cloud

Hushed is both song and dance;

The germs of illness wend their way

To westward each succeeding day

And enter merry France.



Fair land of Gaul, thy patriots brave

Who fear not death and scorn the grave

Cannot this foe oppose,

Whose loathsome hand and cruel sting,

Whose poisonous breath and blighted wing

Full well thy cities know.



In Calais port the illness stays,

As did the French in former days,

To threaten Freedom's isle;

But now no Nelson could o'erthrow

This cruel, unconquerable foe,

Nor save us from its guile.



Yet Father Neptune strove right well

To moderate this plague of Hell,

And thwart it in its course;

And though it passed the streak of brine

And penetrated this thin line,

It came with broken force.



For though it ravaged far and wide

Both village, town and countryside,

Its power to kill was o'er;

And with the favouring winds of Spring

(Blest is the time of which I sing)

It left our native shore.



God shield our Empire from the might

Of war or famine, plague or blight

And all the power of Hell,

And keep it ever in the hands

Of those who fought 'gainst other lands,

Who fought and conquered well.