Lays of Ancient Rome - 4

Horatius at the Bridge
by Thomas B. Macaulay

VII

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 Volsminian mere.

VIII

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.

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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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