"The plan occurred to me in the jungle at the foot of the Neilgherry hills; and most of the verses were made during a dreary sojorn at Ootacamund and a disagreeable voyage in the Bay of Bengal."[1]
The Lays were originally published by Longmans in 1842; they became immensely popular in Victorian times, and were a popular subject for recitation, a common pastime of the era. They were set reading in British public schools for more than a hundred years. Winston Churchill memorised them when at Harrow School, to show that, his academic performance not withstanding, he was capable of certain mental prodigies.[2]
The lead poem, Horatius, concerns Horatius Cocles's heroic defence of the bridge to Rome against the Tuscan Army. It contains the often-quoted lines:
Then out spake brave Horatius,
the Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods
The other poems in the collection are The Battle of Lake Regillus, Virginia, The Prophecy of Capys, Ivry: a Song of the Huguenots, and The Armada: a Fragment.
References
^ Peter Clarke, "A Macaulay Letter." Notes and Queries, October 1967, 369
^ Josiah Bunting III, introduction to Gateway editions of the Lays of Ancient Rome, 1997 (ISBN 089526403X )
External links
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
