Happy the Man by John Dryden (1685) Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington by Ode to the Medieval
on by Ode to the Medieval Poets by W.H. Auden (1971)
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.
Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats (1819) (Oda unei
privighetori)
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense (parfum) hangs upon the boughs
(atarna peste crengi),
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet (pot ghici
fiecare dulceata)
Wherewith the seasonable month endows (inzestreaza)
The grass, the thicket (desisul), and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn (paducelul alb), and the pastoral eglantine
(macesul pastoral);
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine (trandafirul
moscat care tocmai ce infloreste, vin inrourat),
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. (bantuiala
murmuratoare ale mustelor din vara)
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time (intunecandu-ma
ascult)
I have been half in love with easeful Death, (am fost pe
jumatate indragostit de moartea lenesa/tihnita)
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy! (revarsati sufletul in strainatate)
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod. (pentru inaltul tau
recviem devii un gazon)
Alfred Tennyson (1852)
BURY the Great Duke
With an empire’s lamentation, (jalea unui
imperiu)
Let us bury the Great Duke
To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation,
(in zgomotul doliului unei natiuni marete)
Mourning when their leaders fall, (plangand la
caderea liderilor)
Warriors carry the warrior’s pall, (giuliul
razboinicului)
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.
[…] (si intristeaza si pe cei mai saraci si pe cei mai
bogati)
Who is he that cometh, like an honor’d guest,
With banner and with music, with soldier and
with priest,
With a nation weeping, and breaking on my rest?
Mighty Seaman, this is he
Was great by land as thou by sea.
[…]
So great a soldier taught us there,
What long-enduring hearts could do
In that world-earthquake, Waterloo!
Mighty Seaman, tender and true,
And pure as he from taint of craven guile,
O saviour of the silver-coasted isle,
O shaker of the Baltic and the Nile.
Chaucer, Langland, Douglas, Dunbar, with all your
brother Anons, how on earth did you ever manage,
without anaesthetics or plumbing,
in daily peril from witches, warlocks,
lepers, The Holy Office, foreign mercenaries
burning as they came, to write so cheerfully,
with no grimaces of self-pathos?
Long-winded you could be but not vulgar,
bawdy but not grubby, your raucous flytings
sheer high-spirited fun, whereas our makers,
beset by every creature comfort,
immune, they believe, to all superstitions,
even at their best are so often morose or
kinky, petrified by their gorgon egos.
We all ask, but I doubt if anyone
can really say why all age-groups should find our
Age quite so repulsive. Without its heartless
engines, though, you could not tenant my book-shelves,
on hand to delect my ear and chuckle
my sad flesh: I would gladly just now be
turning out verses to applaud a thundery
jovial June when the judas-tree is in blossom,
but am forbidden by the knowledge
that you would have wrought them so much better.