In recent
years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a
sane adult, with equal emphasis on both of those words. No dabbling in drugs
and madness. I brought a volume of his poems with me to Cleveland where I’m
visiting my brother in hospice. No Coleridge or Blake on a trip like this.
Dryden included
“Palamon and Arcite” in Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700). It’s an
adaptation of The Knight’s Tale by
Chaucer, who in turn adapted it from Boccaccio. It’s a good story of love,
friendship and rivalry. This passage near the end of the poem seemed addressed
to me:
“Since every
man who lives is born to die,
And none can
boast sincere felicity,
With equal
mind, what happens, let us bear,
Nor joy, nor
grieve too much for things beyond our care.
Like
pilgrims to the appointed place we tend;
The world’s
an inn, and death the journey's end.”
Dryden was
born on August 19, 1631 and died in 1700 at age sixty-eight. The Australian
poet James McAuley’s “A Letter To John Dryden” is another reliable work:
“The great
Unculture that you feared might be
‘Drawn to the dregs of a democracy’
Is full upon
us; here it sours and thickens
Till every
work of art and honour sickens.
You chose
for your attempt a kind of verse
Well-bred
and easy, energetic, terse;
Reason might
walk in it, or boldly fence,
And all was
done with spirit and with sense.
But who cares now for reason?”
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