-thy wounds in front--
Preferring neigh of steed and clash of arms,
The battle's deadly brunt,

To silken ease, and mirth, and song, and dance,
And festal follies in Etruscan halls--
Bacchantic revels, when the sun went down,
Beyond the city walls,

Couldst well gaze on the mass with eagle eye,
Demanding as a right their voice, and blush
To bare thy scars, while thy patrician scorn
Made cheek and forehead flush.

The base cabals--the hate which drove thee forth
A wanderer, ennobled thee: thy fame
Looked lightning on the curs that dared abuse,
But lacked the power to shame.

Prouder thy spirit in that trying hour
Than theirs who stung thee: well might'st thou go forth
Undaunted, for thy fame was not of Rome,
But, rather, of the earth.

Yet it was hard to leave thy wife and babe--
Virgilia and thy little one--hard to break
The bonds that held thee to them: Rome grew dear--
Most dear for their sweet sake.

But as their forms waxed dim, thy festering heart
Looked from thine eyes; thy swelling nostrils told
The inward struggle, and thy heaving chest
A human ocean rolled.

Kneeling upon the ground, thy sinister arm
Adjuring heaven, thy soul broke forth in tones
Of thunder; but thy agony in that hour
Pale Rome repaid with groans.

Coldly, with stately step and placid brow--
A lull--the herald of the approaching storm--
Thou went'st thy way toward Antium--trod its streets
Without the thought of harm.

Humble was thy approach, but thou went'st forth
A Mars of the time--thy snorting steed arrayed
And glistering with gold, while at thy heels
A thousand clarions brayed.

Rome from her seven hills looked down with fear,
Appalled and breathless, while her people stood
Like men awoke from sleep, amazed, aghast--
With agues in their blood.

Like an avenging angel with the sword
Of wrath unsheathed, careering toward thy home
Through flame and blood, thou rod'st: thy coming shook
The hundred gates of Rome.

She, who abused, beseeched thee, but in vain--
Humbled herself before thee; yet thy hate
Was unappeased; and, like one stricken dumb,
Rome gazed upon her fate.

But when Volumnia ca