Lays of Ancient Rome - 13

Horatius at the Bridge
by Thomas B. Macaulay

XXV

But when the face of Sextus
       
Was seen among the foes,
A yell that rent the firmament
       
From all the town arose.
On the house-tops was no woman
       
But spat towards him and hissed,
No child but screamed out curses,
       
And shook its little fist.

XXVI

But the Consul's brow was sad,
       
And the Consul's speech was low,
And darkly looked he at the wall,
       
And darkly at the foe.
"Their van will be upon us
       
Before the bridge goes down;
And if they once may win the bridge,
       
What hope to save the town?"

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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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