| November 28, 8:02 AM, 2007 · No Comment · Previous · Next |
Dryden’s ‘Happy the Man’
By Scott Horton
![[Image]](/media/image/blogs/misc/halsdrinker.jpg)
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
–John Dryden, Horat. Ode 29. Book 3. Paraphras’d in Pindarique Verse, pt vii (1685) in: The Poems of John Dryden vol. 1, p. 436 (J. Kinsley ed. 1958)
| Previous · Next · More No Comment · Respond via email |
As little as $16.97 for 12 months of Harper's—plus access to our 158-year archive.
SEPTEMBER 2008 TYRANNY OF THE TEST
THROUGH THE OPEN DOOR
WILLOWS VILLAGE
Also: Vivian Gornick and Francine Prose |