singing men allow,' and might visit, as one not wholly without
hope, the dim dwellings of the dead and the unborn. To him was it
permitted to see and sing 'mothers and men, and the bodies outworn
of mighty heroes, boys and unwedded maids, and young men borne to the
funeral fire before their parents' eyes.' The endless caravan swept past
him--'many as fluttering leaves that drop and fall in autumn woods when
the first frost begins; many as birds that flock landward from the great
sea when now the chill year drives them o'er the deep and leads them to
sunnier lands.' Such things was it given to the sacred poet to behold,
and the happy seats and sweet pleasances of fortunate souls, where the
larger light clothes all the plains and dips them in a rosier gleam,
plains with their own new sun and stars before unknown. Ah, not _frustra
pius_ was Virgil, as you say, Horace, in your melancholy song. In him,
we fancy, there was a happier mood than your melancholy patience. 'Not,
though thou wert sweeter of song than Thracian Orpheus, with that lyre
whose lay led the dancing trees, not so would the blood return to the
empty shade of him whom once with dread wand the inexorable god hath
folded with his shadowy flocks; but patience lighteneth what heaven
forbids us to undo.'

_Durum, sed levius fit patientia_?

It was all your philosophy in that last sad resort to which we are
pushed so often--

'With close-lipped Patience for our only friend,
Sad Patience, too near neighbour of Despair.'

The Epicurean is at one with the Stoic at last, and Horace with Marcus
Aurelius. 'To go away from among men, if there are gods, is not a thing
to be afraid of; but if indeed they do not exist, or if they have no
concern about human affairs, what is it to me to live in a universe
devoid of gods or devoid of providence?'

An excellent philosophy, but easier to those for whom no Hope had dawn
or seemed to set. Yet it is harder than common, Horace, for us to think
of you, still glad somewhere, among rivers like Liris and plains and
vine-clad hills, that

Solemque suum, sua sidera borunt.

It is hard, for you looked for no such thing.

_Omnes una manet nox
Et calcanda semel via leti_.

You could not tell Maecenas that you would meet him again; you could
only promise to tread the dark path with him.

_Ibimus, ibimus,
Utcunque praecedes, supremum
Carpere iter comites parati_.

Enough, Horace, of these