however, is undoubtedly its description of the life after death—
"How swiftest vengeance waits the guilty dead;
And for the sins men sin in realms of day,
'Neath earth a stern judge speaks the sentence dread
Of fate's resistless sway.
But, by day alike and night,
Upon the righteous rises ever light;
They dwell in a life unvexed of toil, nor need to task the weary soil,
Nor waters of the main,
For scant subsistence. Tearless days they gain,
With those Heaven-honoured ones in Truth that joy;
While sinners cower 'neath weight of dire annoy.
Happiest they that thrice endure
Through life and death, and still from sin are pure.
For such Zeus leads to Cronus' tower, where round about the island bower
Of blessed spirits strays
Breath of sea airs, and golden flow'rets blaze,
Some on fair trees, some of the waters bred:
Wherewith themselves they garland hands and head."
The Ode ends with a fine outburst of admiration and gratitude:—
"Than Thero's, in a hundred years, no land
Shall rear you kinder heart nor freer hand!
Though envy strive his glories to deface
(No generous foe, but nursed in natures base,
That loves to talk the good man's praise away):
Yet, as the sand still foils the reckoner's count,
Such are the joys we owe him. Who shall say
How boundless their amount?"
