More churlish too than Adria's sea,
With thee I'd live, with thee I'd die.
The austere Scaliger used to say that he would rather have written this ode than be King of Spain and the Indies: Milton's Eve expresses her devotion to Adam in an apostrophe paraphrased from its closing lines.
Observe, too, how we find in all the Odes as we read them, not only a gallery of historical pictures, nor only an unconscious revelation of the poet's self, of, that is, the least subjective among poets, ever, as says Sir Stephen De Vere, looking outward, never looking in; but they incidentally paint for us in vivid and familiarizing tints the intimate daily life of that far-off ancient queen of cities. We walk with them the streets of Rome. We watch the connoisseurs gazing into the curiosity shops and fingering the bronzes or the silver statuettes; the naughty boys jeering the solemn Stoic as he walks along, staid, superior, absent; the good boys coming home from school with well-thumbed lesson books; the lovers in the cookshops or restaurants shooting apple pips from between finger and thumb, rejoicing in the good omen if they strike the ceiling; the stores of Sulpicius the wine merchant and of Sosius the bookseller; the great white Latian ox, exactly such as you see to-day, driven towards the market, with a bunch of hay upon his horns to warn pedestrians that he is dangerous; the coarse drawings in chalk or colours on the wall advertising some famous gladiator; at dusk the whispering lovers in the Campus, or the romping hide-and-seek of lads and lasses at the corners of the streets or squares, just as you may watch them to-day on spring or winter evenings amongst the lower arches of the Colosseum;—it is a microcosm, a cameo, of that old-world life. Horace knew, and feared not to say, that in his poems, in his Odes especially, he bequeathed a deathless legacy to mankind, while setting up a lasting monument to himself. One thing he could not know, that when near two thousand years had passed, a race of which he had barely heard by name as dwelling "quite beyond the confines of the world," would cherish his name and read his writings with a grateful appreciation even surpassing that of his contemporary Romans.
A few Odes remain, too casual to be classified; rejoicings over the vanishing of winter and the return of spring (I, iv); praises of the Tibur streams, of Tarentum (II, vi) which he loved only less than Tibur, of the Lucretilis Groves (I, xvii) which overhung his Sabine valley, of the Bandusian spring beside which he played in boyhood. We have the Pindaric or historic Odes, with tales of Troy, of the Danaid brides, of Regulus, of Europa (III, iii, v, xi, xvii); the dramatic address to Archytas (I, xxviii), which soothed the last moments of Mark Pattison; the fine epilogue which ends the book, composed in the serenity of gained renown;
And now 'tis done: more durable than brass
My monument shall be, and raise its head
O'er royal pyramids: it shall not dread