" But Dryden had a poem: "Annus Mirabilis". The year of wonders. It was a poem about England in 1666. England in 1666 was decidedly not having a year of wonders. England in 1666 had war, plague, and a three-day fire that destroyed most of London, plus Issac Newton invented calculus, thereby making the lives of mathematically ungifted students immeasurably worse. But Dryden's poem was about what a great year it was because it could have been worse. They lived to see 1667 after all. At least, everyone who read the poem did. "

― Laurie Frankel , This Is How It Always Is