I was having the darndest time trying to find Dryden's translation of Horace's famous second epode in a form that was able to be copied and pasted. This happens to be the case with much of Dryden's work in general, and especially his translations (there isn't even a full version of the Fables that is easy to use anywhere). But the unavailability isn't due to indifference so much as the lack of resources to cope with Dryden's massive output: efforts to tackle it (rightly) get concentrated on getting the dramas and the Virgil up first, and then seem to flag.
But his earlier translations (that is, relative to the massive output after he lost the Laureateship), especially those collected in the second volume of the famous miscellanies published with Tonson (1685), are wonderful, and deserve a bit more attention just in general (they include a lot of pastoral and a lot of Lucretius--a really readable version all you philosophers should check out). This translation is one of my favorites: we see Dryden at a marshaling all his skill in heroic versification in a shorter four-beat line, wonderfully varying the rhyme with all the talent involved in deploying his famous triplets (if you're interested in the latter, Christopher Ricks--with his usual brilliance--has addressed this neglected aspect of Dryden's versification in a wonderful piece in Cambridge Companion to Dryden).
It is also just one of Horace's best poems, which I have fond memories of trying my hand at in Latin class: the famous "Beatus ille" epode (you can find the original and a literal translation here), loaded with the counter-pastoral skepticism or rather (because skepticism is too critical and neutral a term) doubled-perspective that can only come from a working-man like Horace, it has a wonderful dignity that is constantly poised upon devolving into something simpler--either through too rich a portrait of the simple life, or through resentment that comes through such doubling, its sardonic sort of turn that would explode the vision--but never does. The achievement of Horace is not tone so much as a sort of pointedness of ridicule: the mockery is not of the simple life so much as of the rich Alfius' impulse to desire it materially--this is what turns the vision into a cartoon. And Dryden captures this perfectly, I think (I should mention that Dryden changes Alfius to Morecraft, a famous contemporary usurer--see also his "Essay of Dramatic Poesie"--a traditional practice in translations of satiric material). But enough prefacing:
The Second Epode of Horace
‘How happy in his low degree,
How rich in humble poverty, is he,
Who leads a quiet country life;
Discharg'd of business, void of strife,
And from the griping scrivener free.
(Thus, ere the seeds of vice were sown,
Liv'd men in better ages born
Who plow'd with oxen of their own
Their small paternal field of corn.)
Nor trumpets summon him to war, [10]
Nor drums disturb his morning sleep,
Nor knows he merchants gainful care,
Nor fears the dangers of the deep.
The clamours of contentious law,
And court and state, he wisely shuns,
Nor brib'd with hopes, nor dar'd with with awe
To servile salutations runs;
But either to the clasping vine
Does the supporting poplar wed,
Or with his pruning-hook disjoin [20]
Unbearing branches from their head,
And grafts more happy in their stead:
Or, climbing to a hilly steep,
He views his herds in vales afar,
Or sheers his overburden'd sheep,
Or mead for cooling drink prepares,
Of virgin honey in the jars.
Or in the now declining year,
When bounteous Autumn rears his head,
He joys to pull the ripened pear, [30]
And clustering grapes with purple spread.
The fairest of his fruit he serves,
Priapus, thy rewards:
Sylvanus too his part deserves,
Whose care the fences guards.
Sometimes beneath an ancient oak
Or on the matted grass he lies:
No god of sleep he need invoke;
The stream that o’er the pebbles flies,
With gentle slumber crowns his eyes. [40]
The wind that whistles through the sprays
Maintains the consord of the song;
And hidden birds, with native lays
The golden sleep prolong.
But when the blast of winter blows,
And hoary frost inverts the year,
Into the naked woods he goes
And seeks the tusky boar to rear,
With well-mouthed hounds and pointed spear;
Or spreads his subtle nets from sight [50]
With twinkling glasses to betray
The larks that in the meshes light,
Or makes the fearful hare his prey.
Amidst his harmless easy joys
No anxious care invades his health,
Nor love his peace of mind destroys,
Nor wicked avarice of wealth.
But if a chaste and pleasing wife,
To ease the business of his life,
Divides with him his household care, [60]
Such as the Sabine Matrons were,
Such as the swift Apulian’s bride,
Sunburnt and swarthy though she be,
Will fire for winter nights provide,
And without noise will oversee
His children and his family,
And order all things till he come
Sweaty and overlabored home;
If she in pens his flocks will fold,
And then produce her dairy store, [70]
With wine to drive away the cold
And unbought dainties of the poor;
Not oysters of the Lucrine lake
My sober appetite would wish,
Nor turbot, or the foreign fish
That rolling tempests overtake,
And hither waft the costly dish.
Not heath-poult, or the rarer bird
Which Phasis or Ionia yields,
More pleasing morsels would afford [80]
Than the fat olives of my fields;
Than chards or mallows for the pot,
That keep the loosened body sound,
Or than the lamb, that falls by lot
To the just guardian of my ground.
Amidst these feasts of happy swains,
The jolly shepherd smiles to see
His flock returning from the plains;
The farmer is as pleased as he
To view his oxen, sweating smoke, [90]
Bear on their necks the loosened yoke:
To look upon his menial crew
That sit around his cheerful hearth,
And bodies spent in toil renew
With wholesome food and country mirth.’
This Morecraft said within himself,
Resolved to leave the wicked town,
And live retired upon his own.
He called his money in;
But the prevailing love of pelf [100]
Soon split him on the former shelf,
And put it out again.
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