Again in crashing chaos rolled,
In vast promiscuous ruin hurled,
Might light his glorious funeral pile:
Still dauntless, ’mid the wreck of earth he’d smile.”
Horace began writing his odes at the age of thirty-five, and was seven years in completing the first three books; they were issued 23 B.C. That he designed them to include all his lyric productions is evident from the following ode, with which the third book closes:—
“And now ’tis done: more durable than brass
My monument shall be, and raise its head
O’er royal pyramids: it shall not dread
Corroding rain or angry Boreas,
Nor the long lapse of immemorial time.