'The World's an End'

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?”