"It may be that the gulfs shall wash us down,
It may be we shall reach the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew."

These islands were supposed to be in the far west, and were probably
the poetical amplification of some voyager's account of the Canaries
or of Madeira. There has always been a region beyond the boundaries of
civilisation to which the poet's fancy has turned for ideal happiness
and peace. The difference between ancient and modern is, that material
comforts, as in this epode, enter largely into the dream of the
ancient, while independence, beauty, and grandeur are the chief
elements in the modern picture:--

"Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
Breadth of Tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.
Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, droops the trailer from the
crag;
Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree,
Summer Isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea."

To the same class of Horace's early poems, though probably a few years
later in date, belongs the following eulogium of a country life and
its innocent enjoyments (Epode 2), the leading idea of which was
embodied by Pope in the familiar lines, wonderful for finish as the
production of a boy of eleven, beginning

"Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound."