ARS PORSENA of Clusium

By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it,
And named a trysting-day,

And bade his messengers ride forth,
East and west and south and north,
To summon his array.

East and west and south and north
The messengers ride fast,

And tower and town and cottage
Have heard the trumpet's blast.

Shame on the false Etruscan

Who lingers in his home, When Porsena of Clusium

Is on the march for Rome.

The horsemen and the footmen
Are pouring in amain

N

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;

From lordly Volaterræ,

Where scowls the far-famed hold

Piled by the hands of giants,

For god-like kings of old; From sea-girt Populonia, Whose sentinels descry Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops Fringing the southern sky;

From the proud mart of Pisæ,
Queen of the western waves,
Where ride Massilia's triremes
Heavy with fair-haired slaves;
From where sweet Clanis wanders

Through corn and vines and flowers; From where Cortona lifts to heaven Her diadem of towers.

Tall are the oaks whose acorns

Drop in dark Auser's rill;

Fat are the stags that champ the boughs Of the Ciminian hill;

Beyond all streams Clitumnus

Is to the herdsman dear;

Best of all pools the fowler loves
The great Volsinian mere.

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 Volsinian mere.

The harvests of Arretium

This old men shall reap;

year

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.

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.

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.”

And now hath every city
Sent up her tale of men:
The foot are fourscore thousand,
The horse are thousands ten.
Before the gates of Sutrium

Is met the great array,
A proud man was Lars Porsena
Upon the trysting-day.

But by the yellow Tiber

Was tumult and affright: From all the spacious champaign To Rome men took their flight. A mile around the city,

The throng stopped up the ways:

A fearful sight it was to see
Through two long nights and days,

For aged folk on crutches,

And women great with child,
And mothers sobbing over babes
That clung to them and smiled,
And sick men borne in litters
High on the necks of slaves,
And troops of sun-burned husbandmen
With reaping-hooks and staves,

And droves of mules and asses
Laden with skins of wine,

And endless flocks of goats and sheep,
And endless herds of kine,
And endless trains of wagons

That creaked beneath their weight Of corn-sacks and of household goods, Choked every roaring gate.

Now, from the rock Tarpeian,
Could the wan burghers spy
The line of blazing villages
Red in the midnight sky.
The Fathers of the City,
They sat all night and day,
For every hour some horseman came
With tidings of dismay.

To eastward and to westward

Have spread the Tuscan bands;