Basil Ransome-Davies 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.
Lightminded 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’
Frank McDonald Happy the man, and happy he alone Whose fingers haven’t touched a mobile phone; Who hasn’t tweeted tweets or faced a book Nor ever used a microwave to cook. Happy indeed the human who can cope Without a daily dose of TV soap And happiest he who’s made it his decision Never to know the curse of television. But where lives such a man? What paradise Protects his thoughts from every modern vice? Does he in island solitude pursue The simple things that Horace used to do? And far from superstores and busy roads Contents himself in reading Latin odes?
Alanna Blake Happy the man and happy he alone To whom the giants of the past have shown Their wealth of wisdom and poetic art: The world of classics, that essential chart Which guides successors on the upward way To bardic heights where still their works hold sway. From Homer, Horace, Dante he now learns, And treading in their footsteps partly earns The vestige of a better power to claim A budding right to hold a poet’s name Than self-taught spouters of this modern stuff Who never seem to hear us cry ‘Enough’. Happy the man who loves the bards of old And with them travels in the realms of gold.
Chris O’Carroll Happy the man, and happy he alone, Who does not cause his listeners to groan With self-regarding narratives that drone Of glory days and triumphs he has known,
Happy who knows the crops his hand has sown And how to harvest once the fields have grown, Who knows next year will fly as last year’s flown And each day’s one day closer to the bone,
Happy who shuns the versified cornpone That Dryden did not blush to call his own, Happy who writes a poem without a tone That puts it in the fortune-cookie zone,
Happy who either didn’t shine or shone Some yesterday, and either way is prone To shrug that what is past is carved in stone, While right now is a short-term, high-rate loan.
Brian Allgar Happy the man, and happy he alone Who runs and rules a country as his own. My wall with Mexico? Well, hey, no sweat; I’ll shut the country down until I get The funding that I want. Them democrats, Them socialists, them migrant-loving rats — Just let them try to stop me! They’re obscene. I’m President, OK? That has to mean I do just what I want. I’ve checked with Vlad, And he agrees: ‘Democracy is bad. The happy man is he who firmly rules, Suppressing all dissent from feeble fools. Do what you like. If one should disagree, Just give him some polonium-flavoured tea.’
That’s great advice, and I’ll be even greater When I declare myself US Dictator.
Philip Roe Happy the man, and happy he alone Whose wishes are fulfilled on every hand. He reaps the crops that other men have sown And charges rent because he owns the land. The life of common men is filled with toil In driving rain, in snow, in searing sun. But when a common man has tilled the soil He takes contentment from a job well done. The happy man can nothing know of this. His life is filled with toys that quickly bore. He has his moments of ecstatic bliss. They pass away and leave him wanting more. The common man can satisfy his need. The happy man cannot allay his greed.
Max Ross Happy the man and happy he alone Who knows what sex he is without a doubt; Who makes deductions from the things he’s shown When a mirror’s honest image points them out. Happy is he who sees his finery And feels no dark temptation to surrender To thoughts of what is meant by binary Nor angst about the transience of gender. Happy the man who readily consents When nature urges him to spend a penny To boldly go through the door that’s headed GENTS Confident he’ll meet no Joan or Jenny. Such happiness our modern theories damn Preferring instead: I think, and so I am.
Your next challenge is to supply a poem in dispraise of Valentine’s Day (16 line maximum). Please email entries to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 6 February.
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