Lays of Ancient Rome - 5

Horatius at the Bridge
by Thomas B. Macaulay

IX
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.

X

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."

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Continued next week. Tomorrow's installment from the great Arab book Thousand and One Nights.

More About This Book

This poem celebrates one of the great heroic legends of history. Horatius saves Rome from the Etruscan invaders in 642 BC. Scottish poet Macaulay published this in 1842.

Illustration: Horatio at the Bridge from the first edition.

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