No More Learning

LXII

Never, I ween, did swimmer,
In such an evil case,
Struggle through such a raging flood
Safe to the landing place:
But his limbs were borne up bravely
By the brave heart within,
And our good father Tiber
Bare bravely up his chin.

LXIII

"Curse on him! " quoth false Sextus;
"Will not the villain drown?
But for this stay, ere close of day
We should have sacked the town! "
"Heaven help him! " quoth Lars Porsena
"And bring him safe to shore;
For such a gallant feat of arms
Was never seen before. "

LXIV

And now he feels the bottom;
Now on dry earth he stands;
Now round him throng the Fathers;
To press his gory hands;
And now, with shouts and clapping,
And noise of weeping loud,
He enters through the River-Gate
Borne by the joyous crowd.

LXV

They gave him of the corn-land,
That was of public right,
As much as two strong oxen
Could plough from morn till night;
And they made a molten image,
And set it up on high,
And there is stands unto this day
To witness if I lie.

LXVI

It stands in the Comitium
Plain for all folk to see;
Horatius in his harness,
Halting upon one knee:
And underneath is written,
In letters all of gold,
How valiantly he kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.

LXVII

And still his name sounds stirring
Unto the men of Rome,
As the trumpet-blast that cries to them
To charge the Volscian home;
And wives still pray to Juno
For boys with hearts as bold
As his who kept the bridge so well
In the brave days of old.

LXVIII

And in the nights of winter,
When the cold north winds blow,
And the long howling of the wolves
Is heard amidst the snow;
When round the lonely cottage
Roars loud the tempest's din,
And the good logs of Algidus
Roar louder yet within;

LXIX

When the oldest cask is opened,
And the largest lamp is lit;
When the chestnuts glow in the embers,
And the kid turns on the spit;
When young and old in circle
Around the firebrands close;
When the girls are weaving baskets,
And the lads are shaping bows;

LXX

When the goodman mends his armor,
And trims his helmet's plume;
When the goodwife's shuttle merrily
Goes flashing through the loom;
With weeping and with laughter
Still is the story told,
How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.






The Battle of the Lake Regillus


The following poem is supposed to have been produced about ninety
years after the lay of Horatius. Some persons mentioned in the
lay of Horatius make their appearance again, and some
appellations and epithets used in the lay of Horatius have been
purposely repeated: for, in an age of ballad-poetry, it scarcely
ever fails to happen, that certain phrases come to be
appropriated to certain men and things, and are regularly applied
to those men and things by every minstrel. Thus we find, both in
the Homeric poems and in Hesiod, [several examples of common
phrases, in Greek]. Thus, too, in our own national songs, Douglas
is almost always the doughty Douglas; England is merry England;
all the gold is red; and all the ladies are gay.
The principal distinction between the lay of Horatius and the lay
of the Lake Regillus is that the former is meant to be purely
Roman, while the latter, though national in its general spirit,
has a slight tincture of Greek learning and of Greek
superstition. The story of the Tarquins, as it has come down to
us, appears to have been compiled from the works of several
popular poets; and one, at least, of those poets appears to have
visited the Greek colonies in Italy, if not Greece itself, and to
have had some acquaintance with the works of Homer and Herodotus.
Many of the most striking adventures of the House of Tarquin,
before Lucretia makes her appearance, have a Greek character. The
Tarquins themselves are represented as Corinthian nobles of the
great House of the Bacchiadae, driven from their country by the
tyranny of that Cypselus, the tale of whose strange escape
Herodotus has related with incomparable simplicity and
liveliness. Livy and Dionysius tell us that, when Tarquin the
Proud was asked what was the best mode of governing a conquered
city, he replied only by beating down with his staff all the
tallest poppies in his garden. This is exactly what Herodotus, in
the passage to which reference has already been made, relates of
the counsel given to Periander, the son of Cypselus. The
stratagem by which the town of Gabii is brought under the power
of the Tarquins is, again, obviously copied from Herodotus. The
embassy of the young Tarquins to the oracle at Delphi is just
such a story as would be told by a poet whose head was full of
the Greek mythology; and the ambiguous answer returned by Apollo
is in the exact style of the prophecies which, according to
Herodotus, lured Croesus to destruction. Then the character of
the narrative changes. From the first mention of Lucretia to the
retreat of Porsena nothing seems to be borrowed from foreign
sources. The villainy of Sextus, the suicide of his victim, the
revolution, the death of the sons of Brutus, the defence of the
bridge, Musius burning his hand, Cloelia swimming through Tiber,
seem to be all strictly Roman. But when we have done with the
Tuscan wars, and enter upon the war with the Latines, we are
again struck by the Greek air of the story. The Battle of the
Lake Regillus is in all respects a Homeric battle, except that
the combatants ride astride on their horses, instead of driving
chariots. The mass of fighting men is hardly mentioned. The
leaders single each other out, and engage hand to hand. The great
object of the warriors on both sides is, as in the Iliad, to
obtain possession of the spoils and bodies of the slain; and
several circumstances are related which forcibly remind us of the
great slaughter round the corpses of Sarpedon and Patroclus.