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Tall are the oaks whose acorns

Drop in dark Auser's rill;

Fat are the stags that champ the boughs
Of the Ciminian hill;

Beyond all streams Clitumnus

Is to the herdsman dear;

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But by the yellow Tiber

Was tumult and affright:
From all the spacious champaign

To Rome men took their flight.
A mile around the city,

The throng stopped up the ways:

HORATIUS.

A fearful sight it was to see
Through two long nights and days.

For aged folk on crutches,

And women great with child,
And mothers sobbing over babes
That clung to them and smiled,
And sick men borne in litters
High on the necks of slaves,
And troops of sun-burned husbandmen
With reaping-hooks and staves,

And droves of mules and asses
Laden with skins of wine,
And endless flocks of goats and sheep,
And endless herds of kine,
And endless trains of wagons

That creaked beneath their weight
Of corn-sacks and of household goods,
Choked every roaring gate.

Now, from the rock Tarpeian,
Could the wan burghers spy
The line of blazing villages
Red in the midnight sky.
The Fathers of the City,

They sat all night and day,

For every hour some horseman came

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