He shook, and crouched, and wrung his hands,

And smote upon his thigh.

"Kind clients, honest lictors,

Stand by me in this fray!

Must I be torn to pieces?

Home, home, the nearest way!"

While yet he spake, and looked around

With a bewildered stare,

Four sturdy lictors put their necks

Beneath the curule chair;

And fourscore clients on the left,

And fourscore on the right,

Arrayed themselves with swords and staves,

And loins girt up for fight.

But though without or staff or sword,

So furious was the throng,

That scarce the train with might and main
Could bring their lord along.

Twelve times the crowd made at him;

Five times they seized his gown;

Small chance was his to rise again,

If once they got him down;

And sharper came the pelting;

And evermore the yell

"Tribunes! we will have Tribunes!"

Rose with a louder swell:

And the chair tossed as tosses

A bark with tattered sail

When raves the Adriatic

Beneath an eastern gale,

When the Calabrian sea-marks

Are lost in clouds of spume,

And the great Thunder-Cape has donned

His veil of inky gloom.

One stone hit Appius in the mouth,

And one beneath the ear;

And ere he reached Mount Palatine,

He swooned with pain and fear. His cursed head, that he was wont

To hold so high with pride,

Now, like a drunken man's, hung down,

And swayed from side to side;

And when his stout retainers

Had brought him to his door,

His face and neck were all one cake

Of filth and clotted gore.

As Appius Claudius was that day,

So may his grandson be!

God send Rome one such other sight,

And send me there to see!