Happy talk | 24 January 2019

In Competition No. 3082 you were invited to write a poem taking as your first line ‘Happy the man, and happy he alone’, which begins the much-loved eighth stanza of poet–translator Dryden’s rendition of Horace’s Ode 29 from Book III.
 
At a time of year when we traditionally take stock and have a futile stab at self-reinvention, you came up with prescriptions that were witty, smart and wide-ranging. The best are printed below and earn their deserving authors £20 each.

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
Who dwells securely in his comfort zone,
Disdaining the temptations of success
While relishing the fruits of idleness.
 
Light-minded indolence preserves the soul
From slithering up ambition’s greasy pole
While kicking frantically at those beneath,
Who curse and fulminate through broken teeth.
 
Though workaholics and achievers boast
Of crushing rivals or who earned the most,
Where would their amour-propre be without
The telling contrast of the layabout?
 
Why be the aspirant who strives and strains,
And grows a peptic ulcer for his pains,
And at the end of day undoes his collar
Sighing, ‘another day, another dolour’.