"Blest and thrice blest the Roman

Who sees Rome's brightest day,
Who sees that long victorious pomp
Wind down the Sacred Way,
And through the bellowing Forum
And round the Suppliant's Grove,
Up to the everlasting gates

Of Capitolian Jove.

"Then where, o'er two bright havens,
The towers of Corinth frown;
Where the gigantic King of Day

In his own Rhodes looks down;
Where soft Orontes murmurs
Beneath the laurel shades;
Where Nile reflects the endless length
Of dark-red colonnades;

Where in the still deep water,

Sheltered from waves and blasts,

Bristles the dusky forests

Of Byrsa's thousand masts;

Where fur-clad hunters wander

Amidst the northern ice;

Where through the sand of morning land

The camel bears the spice;

Where Atlas flings his shadow

Far o'er the western foam,

Shall be great fear on all who hear

The mighty name of Rome."

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;

From lordly Volaterræ,

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.

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 waterfowl may dip

In the Volsinian mere.

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.

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.

For all the Etruscan armies
Were ranged beneath his eye,
And many a banished Roman,
And many a stout ally;
And with a mighty following
To join the muster came
The Tusculan Mamilius,

Prince of the Latian name.

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.

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 the 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.