Lays of Ancient Rome - 2

Horatius at the Bridge
by Thomas B. Macaulay

III

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;

IV

From lordly Volaterrae,
        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;

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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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