No. 2. IF SWINBURNE HAD WRITTEN “THE LAY OF HORATIUS”
Reading edition
N.B.—Read this aloud, with resonance, nor examine too closely the meaning
May the sword burn bright, may the old sword smite, that a myriad years have worn and rusted? May an old wind blow where the young winds go immaculate over the eager land? May faded blossoms on ripening bosoms flame with lust as of old they lusted, Or the might of a night take flight with the white sweet arms of a dead Dionysian band? Ah, nay! for the rods of the high pale gods the power of the past have spilled and broken And over the fields the amaranth yields her guerdon of gossamer, bitter as rue, And the desolate blind sad ghost of the wind falters and fails as a word that was spoken Long since of a fire and a blazing pyre of perjured monarchs and kings untrue.[1] The sword may smite and the keen sword bite though the clouds in the sky be clouds of peril, Though the Teuton glance at the flanks of France and the hand of Fate be a hand unseen, For the brave man’s[2] arm was swift to charm and the coward’s arm was weak and sterile Or ever the Saxon galleons swam to England[3] over the waters green And over the high Thessalian hills the feet of the maidens fail and falter, Samian waters and Lemnian valleys, Ithacan rivers and Lesbian seas, And the god returning with frenzy burning foams at the foot of a roseless altar, And dumb with the kiss of Artemis and the berries of death the virgin flees.
With persistence and luck the reader, after eighty verses or so, would have come to something as specific as this:
For the triumph of the trampling of the nations And the laughter of the loud Etrurian[4] gates And the thunder of a host of desolations And the lightning of an avalanche of hates Never daunted thee or made thy cheek the paler On the bridge which thou didst hold as held the fleet Drake, our own superb Elizabethan sailor, Yea, and drove the bloody tyrant from his seat.