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 liv’d today.

These lines are John Dryden’s English rendering of a celebrated sentiment from the Roman poet Horace: the truly happy person is the one who can claim the present day as his own and face tomorrow without fear. Dryden produced a number of translations and adaptations from classical authors, and this passage belongs to his version of Horace’s Ode 3.29 (addressed to Maecenas), a poem that contrasts political ambition and anxious striving with the calm of moderation and self-command. In Restoration England, such Horatian moralizing—praising contentment, measure, and inner security—fit Dryden’s broader engagement with classical models as guides for conduct and style.

The speaker defines happiness not as pleasure or fortune but as sovereignty over one’s own time and mind. To “call today his own” is to live deliberately and fully in the present, without borrowing trouble from the future. The key claim—“Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have liv’d today”—expresses a stoic-leaning confidence: if one has acted rightly and used the day well, the uncertainties of tomorrow lose their power to intimidate. The line also rebukes restless ambition and procrastination, suggesting that peace comes from inward security rather than external control. It is a moral of sufficiency: a life measured day by day can withstand change, loss, or chance.