But now no stroke of woodman
      Is heard by Auser’s rill;
    No hunter tracks the stag’s green path
      Up the Ciminian hill;
    Unwatched along Clitumnus
      Grazes the milk-white steer;
    Unharmed the water-fowl may dip
      In the Volsinian mere.

    VIII.

    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.

    IX.

    There be thirty chosen prophets,
      The wisest of the land,
    Who always 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.

    X.

    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.”

    XI.

    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.

    XII.

    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.

    XIII.

    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.

    XIV.

    For aged folk on crutches,
      And women great with child,
    And mothers sobbing over babes
      That clung to them and smiled;
    And sick men borne in litters
      High on the necks of slaves,
    And troops of sunburnt husbandmen
      With reaping-hooks and staves;

    XV.

    And droves of mules and asses
      Laden with skins of wine,
    And endless flocks of goats and sheep,
      And endless herds of kine,
    And endless trains of wagons
      That creaked beneath the weight
    Of corn-sacks and of household goods,
      Choked every roaring gate.

    XVI.