The Solemn Vow

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It were a tranquil, soothing night
when healers came upon their plight:
a beastly sick would claim each home
in everyone’s beloved Rome.
The Plague of 1656 --
an agent of the River Styx --
ensured the weary bodies’ rot;
hence curers’ skills were all for naught.
Yet frightly masks adorned their heads
while treating patients in their beds;
then one expired -- two, three four,
and Romans dreaded losing more.
These were the calm before the storm,
they would have traded for a swarm
of locusts plaguing field and fleet
than rather souls fall at their feet.
Some herbal oil filled the mask
of every doctor put to task.
Subtle lavender begot
each long-nosed guise, so moist and hot.

They gather ‘round the darkened church,
where nary a songbird braves to perch
to witness funerals so quick,
lest pestilence decide to stick
to skin dampened from sweat and haste,
they daren’t linger, else they’ll taste
elixirs of the Underworld
and wrath of hellhounds yet unfurled.
“Make way,” they say, to maidens fair
whose golden locks flow without care
for daily wear has gone awry
as denizens pray not to die.
Her solemn service underway
stops when the platform starts to sway
and rumbling whispers turn to shrieks
as pools of blood the casket leaks
and cries of disbelief abound
when body’s feet do touch the ground
for whom they thought was seized by death
has been returned by Satan’s breath
to roam the streets and curse the lives
and eat the babes and burn the wives
as sinister a deal was made
once at her breast the devil laid;
they made a pact, a solemn vow:
eternity he would endow,
if fealty she’d swear him now.

Line count: 47

Written for "Invalid Item"  Round 24.

This piece consists of quatrains following English iambic tetrameter and rhyming scheme aabb, etc. The final quatrain is split, however, into a couplet and a tercet of masculine rhyme.