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.

    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.

    Now, from the rock Tarpeian,
      Could the wan burghers spy
    The line of blazing villages
      Red in the midnight sky. 
    The Fathers of the City,
      They sat all night and day,
    For every hour some horseman came
      With tidings of dismay.

    To eastward and to westward
      Have spread the Tuscan bands;
    Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecot,
      In Crustumerium stands. 
    Verbenna down to Ostia
      Hath wasted all the plain;
    Astur hath stormed Janiculum,
      And the stout guards are slain.