by Thomas B. Macaulay
Then, for a little moment, all people held their breath;
And through the crowded Forum was stillness as of death;
And in another moment brake forth from one and all
A cry as if the Volscians were coming o'er the wall.
Some with averted faces shrieking fled home amain;
Some ran to call a leech; and some ran to lift the slain;
Some felt her lips and little wrist, if life might there be
found;
And some tore up their garments fast, and strove to stanch the
wound.
In vain they ran, and felt, and stanched; for never truer blow
That good right arm had dealt in fight agains a Volscian foe.
Continued next week. Tomorrow's installment from the great Arab book Thousand and One Nights.
A collection consisting exclusively of war-songs would give anScottish poet Macaulay published this in 1842.
imperfect, or rather an erroneous, notion of the spirit of the
old Latin ballads.
Photo, CC-BY-SA-3.0.
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