Come, come, the bells do cry
I am sick, I must die.
Lord have mercy upon us…
Thomas Nashe wrote In Time of Pestilence at a time when the Plague of 1665 was decimating the population of London, and spreading to the rest of the country by means of imports of flea infested cloth and ships’ rats. The Great Fire of London in the year following probably had a cleansing effect, but many homeless Londoners fled to the suburbs and had to start again with little except what they could carry with them. Pepys writes about it in his diaries, noting the crosses marked on the door and corpses piled up on carts to be taken to the plague pits. I was once a teacher at Bunhill (Bone Hill) Row, in a school built over a plague pit on the edge of London. It still sends shivers down my spine to remember that.
I’m hoping the voices of people who have experienced extraordinary things in their lifetimes will continue to resonate with us, so that we don’t forget that Nashe’s In Times of Pestilence also means us, every one of us, here, in Beirut, in a leaking dinghy in the Channel, or wherever we are. Lord have mercy upon us.
To your very good health! And mine.
The blog showing the harsh truth of that period seems very disastrous. It seems like that plague took place everywhere, and I could relate it what the current pandemic did in the whole world.
l’m hoping the voices of people who have experienced extraordinary things in their lifetimes will continue to resonate with us, I always hope so too
Lord have mercy upon us, keep us all safe from this pandemic.
Very timely thing since we are now in amid of a crisis. Will bells cry again? Who knows. The only thing we know is once the smoke clears it is for us to be better.
We are forgetting the harsh’s already, the pestilence has really eaten us deep. Lovely piece, saying all that happen now.
Just like what’s happening this time in our world, let cry out loud. Never fold your hands, change and cure starts from all of us. Ring the bell louder
Have mercy on us all, oh Lord. Keep our families safe at all times, especially in this trying times.
Reading this makes me feel scared and sad. I relate this to today’s global pandemic. I hope
God don’t depart from us your children. Let’s put our supplication before God. We need you totally.