This week is the last covering the long poem Horatius, by Lord Macaulay. I have chosen this poem because it is a tale of heroic resistance to overwhelming odds, and it is easy to draw parallels with the present day. This week’s stanzas tell how Horatius was rewarded and how the tale still inspires his countrymen.
And wives still pray to Juno
Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Macaulay (1800—1859)
For boys with hearts as bold
As his who kept the bridge so well
In the brave days of old.
Poem 369. Horatius, stanzas LXV to LXX (Horatius’s reward and legacy)
LXV
They gave him of the corn-land,
That was of public right,
As much as two strong oxen
Could plough from morn till night;
And they made a molten image,
And set it up on high,
And there it stands unto this day
To witness if I lie.
LXVI
It stands in the Comitium,
Plain for all folk to see;
Horatius in his harness,
halting upon one knee:
And underneath is written,
In letters all of gold,
How valiantly he kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.
LXVII
And still his name sounds stirring
Unto the men of Rome,
As the trumpet-blast that cries to them
To charge the Volscian home;
And wives still pray to Juno
For boys with hearts as bold
As his who kept the bridge so well
In the brave days of old.
LXVIII
And in the nights of winter,
When the cold north winds blow,
And the long howling of the wolves
Is heard amidst the snow;
When round the lonely cottage
Roars loud the tempest’s din,
And the good logs of Algidus
Roar louder yet within;
LXIX
When the oldest cask is opened,
And the largest lamp is lit;
When the chestnuts glow in the embers,
And the kid turns on the spit;
When young and old in circle
Around the firebrands close;
When the girls are weaving baskets,
And the lads are shaping bows;
LXX
When the goodman mends his armour,
And trims his helmet’s plume;
When the goodwife’s shuttle merrily
Goes flashing through the loom;
With weeping and with laughter
Still is the story told,
How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.
Having successfully defied the army of Lars Porsena, felled several Etruscan champions and survived his ordeal in the Tiber, Horatius is carried into the city of Rome and celebrated as a hero by his fellow citizens.
We see here the gratitude shown by the citizens: he is granted a portion of the common land, and a statue of him is cast in metal and placed in the Comitium. This was a space with huge religious significance given over to public meetings, so it seems that his heroism was considered to be almost divine. The statue shows him standing in his armour and favouring his wounded leg (halting is an archaic word for lame) and his deed is recorded in a text on the plinth picked out in golden letters.
Macaulay’s narrator, supposedly writing many years after the time of Horatius, says that the name of the hero still stirs patriotic feelings in the hearts of Romans and rouses them just as a blast of the war trumpets would, while their wives pray for sons imbued with the same valorous spirit—not to the Christian God, but to Juno (Hera in Greek mythology), the goddess of marriage and (most importantly in this context) childbirth.
The poem ends with the narrator showing us a family cocooned in a cottage while the wolves and the wind howl outside and the snow is driven by the storm. Inside, the fire roars as it feeds on logs felled from Mount Algidus, the family open the best wine and prepare a meal. The lamplight shows us them sitting in a circle around the fire: the girls weaving baskets and the boys busy fashioning bows while the father tends to his armour and the mother weaves at her loom, and telling the legend of Horatius together, weeping and laughing alternately.
I like this part of the poem because I’m sentimental and I like to think that such bravery was rewarded and celebrated, not just at the time but long afterwards. I also like the little vignette at the end and the picture painted by Macaulay of the Roman family in their cottage.
I remember my father reading a few stanzas from this poem to us many years ago, so it holds a special place in my heart. As the conflict in Ukraine grinds on and the Trump administration demonstrates its craven subservience to Russia, the courage and stoicism of Zelensky and his countrymen who may be the only thing preventing Putin’s thugs from going further mirrors the bravery of Horatius “who kept the bridge/In the brave days of old.”
One last thought on this poem—as I was finishing this article, I noticed a post on Facebook: “Five Things I Learned From Atticus Finch”—Atticus being the father of Jem and Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. The first quote was this:
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.
This seems to me to summarise the courage of Horatius and of the people of Ukraine perfectly.
While I have been covering this poem, the fifth anniversary of my beginning these articles has come and gone. I hope that you have enjoyed my choices this year and that I continue to entertain you. If there are any songs, poems or poets that you like, perhaps you would get in touch and let me know about them. I enjoy the discipline of writing about a poem every week and have found it helpful in working through my difficulties.
There are a couple of good performances of the poem on YouTube: one by Jake Phillips, and a group reading recorded by A Kindly Voice during the Covid-19 pandemic.