Just browsing my poetry shelves today, I took down Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome', untouched by my hand these thirty years, and reading again 'How Horatius Kept the Bridge', I was struck by how fitting Nelson's Christian name was: the words might have been spoken by Nelson himself:
'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?'
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