It will be only too brief at the best, and the day is at hand when its inequalities will be redressed, and king and peasant, pauper and millionaire, be huddled, poor shivering phantoms, in one undistinguishable crowd, across the melancholy Styx, to the judgment-hall of Minos. To this theme many of Horace's finest Odes are strung. Of these, not the least graceful is that addressed to Dellius (II. 3):-- "Let not the frowns of fate Disquiet thee, my friend, Nor, when she smiles on thee, do thou, elate With vaunting thoughts, ascend Beyond the limits of becoming mirth; For, Dellius, thou must die, become a clod of earth! "Whether thy days go down In gloom, and dull regrets, Or, shunning life's vain struggle for renown, Its fever and its frets, Stretch'd on the grass, with old Falernian wine, Thou giv'st the thoughtless hours a rapture all divine. "Where the tall spreading pine And white-leaved poplar grow, And, mingling their broad boughs in leafy twine, A grateful shadow throw, Where down its broken bed the wimpling stream Writhes on its sinuous way with many a quivering gleam, "There wine, there perfumes bring, Bring garlands of the rose, Fair and too shortlived daughter of the spring, While youth's bright current flows Within thy veins,--ere yet hath come the hour When the dread Sisters Three shall clutch thee in their power. "Thy woods, thy treasured pride, Thy mansion's pleasant seat, Thy lawns washed by the Tiber's yellow tide, Each favourite retreat, Thou must leave all--all, and thine heir shall run In riot through the wealth thy years of toil have won. "It recks not whether thou Be opulent, and trace Thy birth from kings, or bear upon thy brow Stamp of a beggar's race; In rags or splendour, death at thee alike, That no compassion hath for aught of earth, will strike. "One road, and to one bourne We all are goaded. Late Or soon will issue from the urn Of unrelenting Fate The lot, that in yon bark exiles us all To undiscovered shores, from which is no recall." In a still higher strain he sings (Odes, III. 1) the ultimate equality of all human souls, and the vanity of encumbering life with the anxieties of ambition or wealth:-- "Whate'er our rank may be, We all partake one common destiny! In fair expanse of soil, Teeming with rich returns of wine and oil, His neighbour one outvies; Another claims to rise To civic dignities, Because of ancestry and noble birth, Or fame, or proved pre-eminence of worth, Or troops of clients, clamorous in his cause; Still Fate doth grimly stand, And with impartial hand The lots of lofty and of lowly draws From that capacious urn Whence every name that lives is shaken in its turn.