How Selected Poems drew on The Odes of Horace
A documented line of influence: John Dryden demonstrably engaged Horatius’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Odes of Horace
Horatius · 23 BCE
Ancient RomeThe influenced
Selected Poems
John Dryden · 1697
PoetsRelevance
8/10
On Selected Poems’s page
- Several of Dryden's finest lyrics in Sylvae are Horace wearing English dress
- His Happy the Man is a free paraphrase of Horace's Ode 3.29 — the carpe-diem serenity is borrowed wholesale
- Reading the Odes first shows you exactly what Dryden was reaching for: the relaxed, self-possessed wisdom he made his own
On The Odes of Horace’s page
- Dryden didn't just admire Horace — he translated him
- Three of the Odes turn up in his Sylvae (1685), crowned by the Pindaric paraphrase of Ode 3.29, Happy the Man
- Read Horace's Latin Epicurean calm here, then watch Dryden turn it into easy, weighty English