Horatius - Thomas Macaulay

I got turned onto The Lays of Ancient Rome during an episode of Dr. Who where they quote one of the best known verses.

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,

I then went to read the whole poem it belonged to, Horatius. I’ve got to tell you, if I had any talent for drawing I would illustrate this in a heart beat in comic book style. Each verse has such stark, and often exciting, imagry that I could see it clearly in my mind. I’d love to put the fight scenes and the action sequences to the page.

The whole poem is far to long to put here, but you can find it on the Gutenberg Project website and here are a few of my favourite parts (though it is so hard to chose).