Where honey from the hollow oaks doth ooze, and crystal rills Come dancing down with tinkling feet from the sky-dividing hills; There to the pails the she-goats come, without a master's word, And home with udders brimming broad returns the friendly herd. There round the fold no surly bear its midnight prowl doth make, Nor teems the rank and heaving soil with the adder and the snake; There no contagion smites the flocks, nor blight of any star With fury of remorseless heat the sweltering herds doth mar. Nor this the only bliss that waits us there, where drenching rains By watery Eurus swept along ne'er devastate the plains, Nor are the swelling seeds burnt up within the thirsty clods, So kindly blends the seasons there the King of all the Gods. That shore the Argonautic bark's stout rowers never gained, Nor the wily she of Colchis with step unchaste profaned; The sails of Sidon's galleys ne'er were wafted to that strand, Nor ever rested on its slopes Ulysses' toilworn band: For Jupiter, when he with brass the Golden Age alloyed, That blissful region set apart by the good to be enjoyed; With brass and then with iron he the ages seared, but ye, Good men and true, to that bright home arise and follow me! [1] The story of the Phocaeans is told by Herodotus (Ch. 165). When their city was attacked by Harpagus, they retired in a body to make way for the Persians, who took possession of it. They subsequently returned, and put to the sword the Persian garrison which had been left in it by Harpagus. "Afterwards, when this was accomplished, they pronounced terrible imprecations on any who should desert the fleet; besides this, they sunk a mass of molten iron, and swore that they would never return to Phocaea until it should appear again." This poem, Lord Lytton has truly said, "has the character of youth in its defects and its beauties. The redundance of its descriptive passages is in marked contrast to the terseness of description which Horace studies in his Odes; and there is something declamatory in its general tone which is at variance with the simpler utterance of lyrical art. On the other hand, it has all the warmth of genuine passion, and in sheer vigour of composition Horace has rarely excelled it." The idea of the Happy Isles, referred to in the poem, was a familiar one with the Greek poets. They became in time confounded with the Elysian fields, in which the spirits of the departed good and great enjoyed perpetual rest. It is as such that Ulysses mentions them in Tennyson's noble monologue:-- "It may be that the gulfs shall wash us down, It may be we shall reach the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew."