CLASSIC HEROIC BALLADS.

HORATIUS.

A LAY MADE ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE CITY CCCLX.

LARS PORSENA of Clusium

By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it,
And named a trysting day,
And bade his messengers ride forth,
East and west and south and north,
To summon his array.

East and west and south and north
The messengers ride fast,

And tower and town and cottage

Have heard the trumpet's blast.

Shame on the false Etruscan

Who lingers in his home,

When Porsena of Clusium

Is on the march for Rome.

The horsemen and the footmen
Are pouring in amain,

From many a stately market-place;

From many a fruitful plain ;

From many a lonely hamlet,

Which, hid by beech and pine,

Like an eagle's nest, hangs on the crest

Of purple Apennine ;

From lordly Volaterræ,

Where scowls the far-famed hold

Piled by the hands of giants

For godlike kings of old;

From seagirt Populonia,

Whose sentinels descry Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops Fringing the southern sky;

From the proud mart of Pisa,

Queen of the western waves, Where ride Massilia's triremes

Heavy with fair-haired slaves;

From where sweet Clanis wanders

Through corn and vines and flowers;

From where Cortona lifts to heaven

Her diadem of towers.

Tall are the oaks whose acorns

Drop in dark Auser's rill;

Fat are the stags that champ the boughs Of the Ciminian hill; Beyond all streams Clitumnus

Is to the herdsman dear;

Best of all pools the fowler loves
The great Volsinian mere.

But now no stroke of woodman
Is heard by Auser's rill;

No hunter tracks the stag's green path
Up the Ciminian hill;
Unwatched along Clitumnus

Grazes the milk-white steer;
Unharmed the water-fowl may dip

In the Volsinian mere.

The harvests of Arretium

This year, old men shall reap; This year, young boys in Umbro Shall plunge the struggling sheep;

And in the vats of Luna,

This year, the must shall foam Round the white feet of laughing girls,

Whose sires have marched to Rome.

There be thirty chosen prophets,

The wisest of the land,

Who alway by Lars Porsena

Both morn and evening stand: Evening and morn the Thirty Have turned the verses o'er, Traced from the right on linen white By mighty seers of yore.

And with one voice the Thirty
Have their glad answer given :
"Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena ;
Go forth, beloved of Heaven;
Go, and return in glory

To Clusium's royal dome;

And hang round Nurscia's altars

The golden shields of Rome."

And now hath every city

Sent up her tale of men;
The foot are fourscore thousand,
The horse are thousands ten.

Before the gates of Sutrium

Is met the great array.
A proud man was Lars Porsena

Upon the trysting day,

For all the Etruscan armies

Were ranged beneath his eye, And many a banished Roman,

And many a stout ally; And with a mighty following

To join the muster came The Tusculan Mamilius,

Prince of the Latian name.

But by the yellow Tiber

Was tumult and affright;
From all the spacious champaign
To Rome men took their flight.
A mile around the city,

The throng stopped up the ways;
A fearful sight it was to see,

Through two long nights and days.

For aged folk on crutches,

And women great with child, And mothers sobbing over babes That clung to them and smiled, And sick men borne in litters

High on the necks of slaves,

And troops of sun-burned husbandmen With reaping-hooks and staves,