Roman holiday (RO-muhn HOL-i-day) noun

An entertainment event where pleasure is derived from watching gore
and barbarism.

[From the gladiatorial contests held in ancient Rome.]

"There were his young barbarians all at play;
There was their Dacian mother: he, their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday!"
Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto iv. Stanza 141.


++

poetry to the people: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came


> (See Edgar's song in Shakespeare's King Lear.)
>
>
<A HREF="http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/#1">1</A> My first thought was, he lied in every word,
2 That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
3 Askance to watch the working of his lie
4 On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
5 Suppression of the glee that pursed and scored
6 Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

7 What else should he be set for, with his staff?
8 What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
9 All travellers who might find him posted there,
10 And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
11 Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
12 For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

13 If at his counsel I should turn aside
14 Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
15 Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
16 I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
17 Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
18 So much as gladness that some end might be.


http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/browning13.html