I
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,
...
A Lay Sung at the Banquet in the Capitol, on the Day Whereon
Manius Curius Dentatus, a Second Time Consul, Triumphed Over King
Pyrrhus and the Tarentines, in the Year of the City CCCCLXXIX.
I
Now slain is King Amulius,
Of the great Sylvian line,
...
Straightway Virginius led the maid a little space aside,
To where the reeking shambles stood, piled up with horn and hide,
Close to yon low dark archway, where, in a crimson flood,
Leaps down to the great sewer the gurgling stream of blood.
Hard by, a flesher on a block had laid his whittle down:
...
Least Bee that brew —
A Honey's Weight
Content Her smallest fraction help
The Amber Quantity —
Least Rivers — docile to some sea.
My Caspian — thee.
When last I died, and, dear, I die
As often as from thee I go,
Though it be but an hour ago
—And lovers' hours be full eternity—
I can remember yet, that I
Something did say, and something did bestow;
Though I be dead, which sent me, I might be
Mine own executor, and legacy.
...
A knave and a fool on an island were cast;
Their ship had gone down in the hurricane's blast.
On the island they met, while hungry and wet,
A wise man who aid to them gave;
They were given a home, with the freedom to roam,
Bounded by naught but the wave.
The fool, though demented, was easily...
Lest any doubt that we are glad that they were born Today
Whose having lived is held by us in noble Holiday
Without the date, like Consciousness or Immortality —
Lest they should come — is all my fear
When sweet incarcerated here