For Jupiter, when he with brass the Golden Age alloyed,
That blissful region set apart by the good to be enjoyed;
With brass and then with iron he the ages seared, but ye,
Good men and true, to that bright home arise and follow me!

[1]
The story of the Phocaeans is told by Herodotus (Ch. 165). When
their city was attacked by Harpagus, they retired in a body to make
way for the Persians, who took possession of it. They subsequently
returned, and put to the sword the Persian garrison which had been
left in it by Harpagus. "Afterwards, when this was accomplished,
they pronounced terrible imprecations on any who should desert the
fleet; besides this, they sunk a mass of molten iron, and swore
that they would never return to Phocaea until it should appear
again."

This poem, Lord Lytton has truly said, "has the character of youth in
its defects and its beauties. The redundance of its descriptive
passages is in marked contrast to the terseness of description which
Horace studies in his Odes; and there is something declamatory in its
general tone which is at variance with the simpler utterance of
lyrical art. On the other hand, it has all the warmth of genuine
passion, and in sheer vigour of composition Horace has rarely excelled
it."

The idea of the Happy Isles, referred to in the poem, was a familiar
one with the Greek poets. They became in time confounded with the
Elysian fields, in which the spirits of the departed good and great
enjoyed perpetual rest. It is as such that Ulysses mentions them in
Tennyson's noble monologue:--