But he saw on Palatinus The white porch of his home; And he spake to the noble river That rolls by the towers of Rome. 59. "Oh, Tiber! father Tiber! 60. No sound of joy or sorrow Was heard from either bank; But friends and foes in dumb surprise, With parted lips and straining eyes, Stood gazing where he sank; And when above the surges They saw his crest appear, All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, And even the ranks of Tuscany Could scarce forbear to cheer. 61. But fiercely ran the current, And fast his blood was flowing; And heavy with his armour, And spent with changing blows: And oft they thought him sinking, 62. Never, I ween, did swimmer, Struggle through such a raging flood Safe to the landing place : But his limbs were borne up bravely By the brave heart within, Bare bravely up his chin.* "Curse on him!" quoth false Sextus; 64. And now he feels the bottom; 65. They gave him of the corn-land, Could plough from morn till night; And they made a molten image, And set it up on high, And there it stands unto this day "Our ladye bare upp her chinne." Yet through good heart and our lady's grace, * Lay of the Last Minstrel, I. 66. It stands in the Comitium, 67. And still his name sounds stirring As the trumpet blast that cries to them 68. And in the nights of winter, 69. When the oldest cask is opened, When the chestnuts glow in the embers, When young and old in circle Around the firebrands close; When the girls are weaving baskets, And the lads are shaping bows; 70. When the goodman mends his armour, How well Horatius kept the bridge THE BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS. THE following poem is supposed to have been produced 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 balladpoetry, 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, βιη Ηρακληείη, περικλυτος Αμφιγυήεις, διάκτορος Αργειφόντης, επτάπυλος Θηβη, Ελενης ενεκ ηυκόμοιο. 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, till Lucretia makes her appearance, have a Greek character. The Tarquins themselves are represented as Corinthian nobles of the great house of the Bacchiadæ, driven from the country by the tyranny of that Cypselus, the tale of whose strange escape Herodotus has related with incomparable simplicity |