Adam Clarke on Lamentations 1:20

Abroad the sword bereaveth - War is through the country; and at home death; the pestilence and famine rage in the city; calamity in every shape is fallen upon me.

Virgil represents the calamities of Troy under the same image: - - Nec soli poenas dant sanguine Teucri:

Quondam etiam victis redit in praecordia virtus;

Victoresque cadunt Danai. Crudelis ubique

Luctus, ubique Pavor, et plurima mortis imago.

Aeneid. lib. 2:366. "Not only Trojans fall; but, in their turn,

The vanquished triumph, and the victors mourn.

Ours take new courage from despair and night;

Confused the fortune is, confused the fight.

All parts resound with tumults, plaints, and fears;

And grisly death in sundry shapes appears."

Dryden.

So Milton - " - Despair

Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch;

And over them triumphant Death his dart Shook."

Par. Lost, B. 11:489.

Jeremiah, Jer 9:21, uses the same image: -

Death is come up into our windows:

He hath entered our palaces,

To cut off the infants without,

And the young men in our streets.

So Silius Italicus, II. 548: -

Mors graditur, vasto pandens cava guttura rletu,

Casuroque inhians populo. "Death stalks along, and opens his hideous throat to gulp down the people."