Prologue: By the winter of 1350
It swept the land in an uncontrolledoutburst
Famine, cold and pestilential misery
Surely this must be a divine damnation
Punishment from below
Be it devil or demon that reaps thiscursed nation
No one of us deserves suffering thus
Oh lord, what have we done
Oh God, have you forsaken us?I ride the night air
On pestilential wings
I am the nightmare
That slays your kith and kin
I ride your bed at night
An incubus so vile
My work is seen throughout
The smoke of funeral pyres
Black rats do my work
Punishment begins
Cover your face, everyone has heard
Here is payment for your sins
This epoch you won't forget
You're burning from inside
In the final throes of horrid death
The proudest men forget their pride
They cry in pain immense
Praying to be spared
But your god seems not to care
Mothers, daughters, fathers, sons
All are prey alike
Twitching in rotten bowel runs
I crave a heavy toll
The deadringers sound the bell
For all of you who fell
I reap the field in rage
You scream in mindless fear
When gripped in my embrace
I purify, you putrefy, the end I provide
For your blasphemy, I bring youdisease, a funeral feast
I take the helm and steer you into, ahellish domain
You fall in the streets, succumb inyour sheets, diabolic disease
And you don't know why
Why your children die
And you won't know why
On winds of death I ride
Now summer has come overthe city
Midday heat is low
The surviving few bring outtheir dead
A neverending flow...I am the death, upon your blackbreath, I am black death
I am the reason, that children liecrying, watching their parentsdying
And I am formless, alwaysrelentless, something youcannot see
And I am evil, I am disaster, I amcatastrophe
By the end of 1352, two thirdsare gone
A horrible tale of pestilence andplague, darkness and woe
Now I subside, slowly die out,yet I have won
But I will return, in futures tocome, in different forms
Philip von Segebaden
Stockholm, '97
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