Epitaph On An Army of Mercenaries,Alfred Edward Housman was an English classical scholar and poet. Alfred Edward Housman is now acknowledged as one of the foremost classicists of his age and has been ranked as one of the greatest scholars at any time. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius and Lucan are still considered authoritative.
Epitaph On An Army of Mercenaries by Alfred Edward Housman
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.
