I think a scan of precedents will
find that my custom of reading in
John Dryden on Christmas Eve has
been inspired by his brilliant
translation of Aeneid. I haven't
any inhibition against admitting,
I love Dryden, because he's safe
from superfluous reprisals. That
said, as stoutly as I've champi-
oned to myself, at least, the
music of his Aeneid, this year
in America, as this year in my
aging, has found me this evening
grateful for his lovely phrasing
of Virgil's bucolic masterpiece,
Georgics. There is not a poem be-
fore Pope's which I revisit more
constantly, or one which better
typifies my respect for music.
This year, I need the great mig-
ration of the priceless treasure
more, even than Aeneas' searches.
Say what one will, for defaults
in our study of Latin, that we
had such conduits as Pope and
Dryden to absolve us in their
mercy is, to me, a gift of God.
The night can withstand another.
Oh, fortunate farmers, he
famously had begun, in the
2nd book of Georgics, and
every schoolboy will smile
to recognize, Shakespeare:
O happy if he knew his happy state!
The swain who, free from business and debate,
Receives his easy food from nature's hand
And just returns of cultivated land!
No palace with a lofty gate he wants
To pour out tides of early visitants.
With eager eyes devouring as they pass
The breathing figures of Corinthian brass.
No statues threaten from high pedestals;
No Persian arras hides his homely walls
With antique vests which through their shady fold
Betray the streaks of ill-dissembled gold.
He boasts no wool, whose native white is dyed
with purple poison of Assyrian pride.
No costly drugs of Araby defile
With foreign scents the sweetness of his oil.
But easy quiet, a secure retreat,
A harmless life that knows not how to cheat,
With homebred plenty the rich owner bless,
And rural pleasures crown his happiness ..
Ye sacred muses, with wise beauty fired,
My soul is ravished and my brain inspired.
John Dryden
1631 - 1700
Selected Poems
The Country
[fragments]
1697
Steven N. Zwicker
and David Bywaters
editors
Penguin Classics, 2001©
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