A LAY MADE ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE CITY CCCLX. LORD MACAULAY.--1800-1859. Lars 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 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 Volaterrae, 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 Pisae, queen of the western waves, Where ride Massilia's triremes heavy with fair-hair'd 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; Unwatch'd along Clitumnus grazes the milk-white steer; Unharm'd 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 march'd 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 turn'd 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, belov'd of heaven. Go, and return in glory to Clusium's royal dome; And hang round Nurscia's altars the golden shields of Rome."