Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
[59] scar: a crag, a precipice.
West and East
Rome is chiefly known to young readers through the medium of Macaulay’s spirited “Lays,” which, however, are only a re-telling, in English ballad form, of some of the legends which survived into historical times concerning the infant city, about which nothing certain is known. They give no idea of the Rome of history, the world-power, or of the brooding immensity of her influence through centuries. This and the following poem illustrate, to some slight extent, the later Rome.
In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,
The Roman noble lay;
He drove abroad, in furious guise,