Saturday, January 6, 2024

Horatius At The Bridge



Dear Readers, you do understand we had to memorize this, as schoolboys? here's an excerpt from Macauly's epic Horatius:

 

And nearer fast and nearer

    Doth the red whirlwind come;

And louder still and still more loud,

From underneath that rolling cloud,

Is heard the trumpet’s war-note proud,

    The trampling, and the hum.

And plainly and more plainly

    Now through the gloom appears,

Far to left and far to right,

In broken gleams of dark-blue light,

The long array of helmets bright,

    The long array of spears.


XXII


And plainly and more plainly,

    Above that glimmering line,

Now might ye see the banners

    Of twelve fair cities shine;

But the banner of proud Clusium

    Was highest of them all,

The terror of the Umbrian,

    The terror of the Gaul.


XXIII


And plainly and more plainly

    Now might the burghers know,

By port and vest, by horse and crest,

    Each warlike Lucumo.

There Cilnius of Arretium

    On his fleet roan was seen;

And Astur of the four-fold shield,

Girt with the brand none else may wield,

Tolumnius with the belt of gold,

And dark Verbenna from the hold

    By reedy Thrasymene.


XXIV


Fast by the royal standard,

    O’erlooking all the war,

Lars Porsena of Clusium

    Sat in his ivory car.

By the right wheel rode Mamilius,

    Prince of the Latian name;

And by the left false Sextus,

    That wrought the deed of shame.


And nearer fast and nearer doth the red whirlwind come. Stand back in awe.

Your Old Pal,

LSP


16 comments:

  1. British education was/is better than the US. For a high school English class we were required to memorize a poem of our choice and recite it in class. I chose Robert W. Service's, "The Cremation of Sam McGee". Wanted something tasteful and uplifting that reflected my admiration for the teacher.

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  2. And to the Norse Warrior at Stamford Bridge...

    To Benkei whose standing death upon the bridge to his lord's castle allowed his lord to end peacefully.

    The ones who stand against the hordes no matter what, often taken down by fowl means, are always the most heroic.

    As to poems memorized, well, "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe. All of it. Great poem...

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    Replies
    1. Who else remembers
      “The Spaniel”
      by Edgar, Al, and Moe?

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  3. I was raised in barbarism, compared to you people. We were required to correctly recite Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, or near enough for the incorrigibles, and that was it. That was retained in the long term about as well as you'd expect.

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  4. Mine was Casey at the Bat.

    The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day:
    The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play,
    And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
    A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

    The lesson was that pride goes before a fall...

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  5. I have Avram Davidson’s “The Thong of Thor” memorized and on tap.

    “Fortunately, Ah keep mah feh-thus numbered fo jus such an emergency.”

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  6. Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better? Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods.".

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  7. Better to die with your teeth on the throat of your killer than on your knees facing away from Death.

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  8. Heroic, LL, and those lines have stayed with me after all these years.

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  9. I had to look it up, Mike!

    Most awesome.

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  10. Most awesome, NFO, good call.

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  11. But Anon:

    "Once upon a midnight cautious, while I pondered, weak and nauseous,
    Over some advertising copy I had wrote for Macy's store -
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a yapping,
    As of someone loudly yapping, yapping at my office door.
    'Tis some client there,' I muttered,'yapping at my office door -
    only this and nothing more.'

    Then I felt my terror worsen, for my guest was not a person!
    In there stepped a cocker spaniel..."

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  12. Wild, I have never memorized that address.

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  13. WSF, we sure had to memorize a lot of stuff, starting with Latin and Greek vocab from the age of 7... should've kept it up and become fluent, which I'm uselessly not. So, liturgical Spanish it is!

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