The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 174

I must abjure the Balm of Life, I must, Scared by some After-reckoning ta'en on trust, Or lured with Hope of some Diviner Drink, To fill the Cup--when crumbled into Dust!

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 45

And look--a thousand Blossoms with the Day Woke--and a thousand scatter'd into Clay: And this first Summer Month that brings the Rose Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 222

(V.) Iram, planted by King Shaddad, and now sunk somewhere in the Sands of Arabia. Jamshyd's Seven-ring'd Cup was typical of the 7 Heavens, 7 Planets, 7 Seas, &c., and was a Divining Cup.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 231

[Included in Nicolas's edition as No. 350 of the Rubaiyat, and also in Mr. Whinfield's translation.]

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 28

I must say that I, for one, never wholly believed in the Mysticism of Hafiz. It does not appear there was any danger in holding and singing Sufi Pantheism, so long as the Poet made his Salaam to Mohammed at the beginning and end of his Song. Under such conditions Jelaluddin, Jami, Attar, and others sang; using Wine and Beauty indeed as Images to illustrate, not as a Mask to hide, the Divinity they were celebrating. Perhaps some Allegory less liable to mistake or abuse had been better among so inflammable a People: much more so when, as some think with Hafiz and Omar, the abstract is not only likened to, but identified with, the sensual Image; hazardous, if not to the Devotee himself, yet to his weaker Brethren; and worse for the Profane in proportion as the Devotion of the Initiated grew warmer. And all for what? To be tantalized with Images of sensual enjoyment which must be renounced if one would approximate a God, who according to the Doctrine, is Sensual Matter as well as Spirit, and into whose Universe one expects unconsciously to merge after Death, without hope of any posthumous Beatitude in another world to compensate for all one's self- denial in this. Lucretius' blind Divinity certainly merited, and probably got, as much self-sacrifice as this of the Sufi; and the burden of Omar's Song--if not "Let us eat"--is assuredly--"Let us drink, for To-morrow we die!" And if Hafiz meant quite otherwise by a similar language, he surely miscalculated when he devoted his Life and Genius to so equivocal a Psalmody as, from his Day to this, has been said and sung by any rather than spiritual Worshippers.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 117

Iram indeed is gone with all his Rose, And Jamshyd's Sev'n-ring'd Cup where no one knows; But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine, And many a Garden by the Water blows.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 169

Ah, by my Computations, People say, Reduce the Year to better reckoning?--Nay, 'Twas only striking from the Calendar Unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 149

For I remember stopping by the way To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay: And with its all-obliterated Tongue It murmur'd--"Gently, Brother, gently, pray!"

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 8

"At Naishapur thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, 'busied,' adds the Vizier, 'in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in Astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence. Under the Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained great praise for his proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered favors upon him.'

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 75

One Moment in Annihilation's Waste, One moment, of the Well of Life to taste-- The Stars are setting, and the Caravan Starts for the dawn of Nothing--Oh, make haste!

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 76

How long, how long, in infinite Pursuit Of This and That endeavour and dispute? Better be merry with the fruitful Grape Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 133

Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears TO-DAY of past Regrets and future Fears: To-morrow--Why, To-morrow I may be Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n thousand Years.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 15

Though the Sultan "shower'd Favors upon him," Omar's Epicurean Audacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especially hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose Practise he ridiculed, and whose Faith amounts to little more than his own, when stript of the Mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide. Their Poets, including Hafiz, who are (with the exception of Firdausi) the most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar's material, but turning it to a mystical Use more convenient to Themselves and the People they addressed; a People quite as quick of Doubt as of Belief; as keen of Bodily sense as of Intellectual; and delighting in a cloudy composition of both, in which they could float luxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this World and the Next, on the wings of a poetical expression, that might serve indifferently for either. Omar was too honest of Heart as well of Head for this. Having failed (however mistakenly) of finding any Providence but Destiny, and any World but This, he set about making the most of it; preferring rather to soothe the Soul through the Senses into Acquiescence with Things as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain disquietude after what they might be. It has been seen, however, that his Worldly Ambition was not exorbitant; and he very likely takes a humorous or perverse pleasure in exalting the gratification of Sense above that of the Intellect, in which he must have taken great delight, although it failed to answer the Questions in which he, in common with all men, was most vitally interested.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 257

"The Pot calls a bystander to be a witness to his bad treatment. The woman says, 'If, by Proserpine, instead of all this 'testifying' (comp. Cuddie and his mother in 'Old Mortality!') you would buy yourself a rivet, it would show more sense in you!' The Scholiast explains echinus as [Greek phrase deleted from etext]."

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 121

Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say: Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday? And this first Summer month that brings the Rose Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 171

The Grape that can with Logic absolute The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute: The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute;

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 157

'Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest; The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash Strikes, and prepares it for another Guest.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 107

Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before I swore--but was I sober when I swore? And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand My thread-bare Penitence a-pieces tore.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 34

[Footnote 5: "Since this paper was written" (adds the Reviewer in a note), "we have met with a Copy of a very rare Edition, printed at Calcutta in 1836. This contains 438 Tetrastichs, with an Appendix containing 54 others not found in some MSS."]

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 167

You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse I made a Second Marriage in my house; Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed, And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 51

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon, Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face Lighting a little Hour or two--is gone.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 256

[Greek text deleted from etext.]

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 52

And those who husbanded the Golden Grain, And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain, Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd As, buried once, Men want dug up again.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 113

WAKE! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight The Stars before him from the Field of Night, Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 193

Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make, And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake: For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take!

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 131

I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled; That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 137

Alike for those who for TO-DAY prepare, And those that after some TO-MORROW stare, A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries, "Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There."

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 33

[Footnote 4: The Rashness of the Words, according to D'Herbelot, consisted in being so opposed to those in the Koran: "No Man knows where he shall die."--This story of Omar reminds me of another so naturally--and when one remembers how wide of his humble mark the noble sailor aimed--so pathetically told by Captain Cook--not by Doctor Hawkworth--in his Second Voyage (i. 374). When leaving Ulietea, "Oreo's last request was for me to return. When he saw he could not obtain that promise, he asked the name of my Marai (burying-place). As strange a question as this was, I hesitated not a moment to tell him 'Stepney'; the parish in which I live when in London. I was made to repeat it several times over till they could pronounce it; and then 'Stepney Marai no Toote' was echoed through an hundred mouths at once. I afterwards found the same question had been put to Mr. Forster by a man on shore; but he gave a different, and indeed more proper answer, by saying, 'No man who used the sea could say where he should be buried.'"]

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 20

The Reviewer,[6] to whom I owe the Particulars of Omar's Life, concludes his Review by comparing him with Lucretius, both as to natural Temper and Genius, and as acted upon by the Circumstances in which he lived. Both indeed were men of subtle, strong, and cultivated Intellect, fine Imagination, and Hearts passionate for Truth and Justice; who justly revolted from their Country's false Religion, and false, or foolish, Devotion to it; but who fell short of replacing what they subverted by such better Hope as others, with no better Revelation to guide them, had yet made a Law to themselves. Lucretius indeed, with such material as Epicurus furnished, satisfied himself with the theory of a vast machine fortuitously constructed, and acting by a Law that implied no Legislator; and so composing himself into a Stoical rather than Epicurean severity of Attitude, sat down to contemplate the mechanical drama of the Universe which he was part Actor in; himself and all about him (as in his own sublime description of the Roman Theater) discolored with the lurid reflex of the Curtain suspended between the Spectator and the Sun. Omar, more desperate, or more careless of any so complicated System as resulted in nothing but hopeless Necessity, flung his own Genius and Learning with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Ruin which their insufficient glimpses only served to reveal; and, pretending sensual pleasure, as the serious purpose of Life, only diverted himself with speculative problems of Deity, Destiny, Matter and Spirit, Good and Evil, and other such questions, easier to start than to run down, and the pursuit of which becomes a very weary sport at last!

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 242

(LI.) From Mah to Mahi; from Fish to Moon.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 41

Now the New Year reviving old Desires, The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires, Where the WHITE HAND OF MOSES on the Bough Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 186

YESTERDAY This Day's Madness did prepare; TO-MORROW's Silence, Triumph, or Despair: Drink! for you not know whence you came, nor why: Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 21

With regard to the present Translation. The original Rubaiyat (as, missing an Arabic Guttural, these Tetrastichs are more musically called) are independent Stanzas, consisting each of four Lines of equal, though varied, Prosody; sometimes all rhyming, but oftener (as here imitated) the third line a blank. Somewhat as in the Greek Alcaic, where the penultimate line seems to lift and suspend the Wave that falls over in the last. As usual with such kind of Oriental Verse, the Rubaiyat follow one another according to Alphabetic Rhyme--a strange succession of Grave and Gay. Those here selected are strung into something of an Eclogue, with perhaps a less than equal proportion of the "Drink and make-merry," which (genuine or not) recurs over-frequently in the Original. Either way, the Result is sad enough: saddest perhaps when most ostentatiously merry: more apt to move Sorrow than Anger toward the old Tentmaker, who, after vainly endeavoring to unshackle his Steps from Destiny, and to catch some authentic Glimpse of TO-MORROW, fell back upon TO-DAY (which has outlasted so many To-morrows!) as the only Ground he had got to stand upon, however momentarily slipping from under his Feet.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 202

So while the Vessels one by one were speaking, The little Moon look'd in that all were seeking: And then they jogg'd each other, "Brother! Brother! Now for the Porter's shoulders' knot a-creaking!"

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 62

Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 136

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the Dust descend; Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 83

For in and out, above, about, below, 'Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show, Play'd in a Box whose Candle is the Sun, Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 227

(XIV.) That is, the Rose's Golden Centre.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 229

BAHRAM GUR.--Bahram of the Wild Ass--a Sassanian Sovereign--had also his Seven Castles (like the King of Bohemia!) each of a different Colour: each with a Royal Mistress within; each of whom tells him a Story, as told in one of the most famous Poems of Persia, written by Amir Khusraw: all these Sevens also figuring (according to Eastern Mysticism) the Seven Heavens; and perhaps the Book itself that Eighth, into which the mystical Seven transcend, and within which they revolve. The Ruins of Three of those Towers are yet shown by the Peasantry; as also the Swamp in which Bahram sunk, like the Master of Ravenswood, while pursuing his Gur.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 144

There was the Door to which I found no Key; There was the Veil through which I might not see: Some little talk awhile of ME and THEE There was--and then no more of THEE and ME.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 166

Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit Of This and That endeavor and dispute; Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 58

Lo! some we loved, the loveliest and the best That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest, Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before, And one by one crept silently to Rest.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 87

The Ball no Question makes of Ayes and Noes, But Right or Left as strikes the Player goes; And He that toss'd Thee down into the Field, He knows about it all--HE knows--HE knows!

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 239

Thus Hafiz, copying Omar in so many ways: "When thou drinkest Wine pour a draught on the ground. Wherefore fear the Sin which brings to another Gain?"

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 199

Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot-- I think a Sufi pipkin--waxing hot-- "All this of Pot and Potter--Tell me then, Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?"

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 244

If we be two, we two are so As stiff twin-compasses are two; Thy Soul, the fixt foot, makes no show To move, but does if the other do.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 250

(LXX.) A very mysterious Line in the Original:

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 234

(XXI.) A thousand years to each Planet.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 203

Ah, with the Grape my fading life provide, And wash the Body whence the Life has died, And lay me, shrouded in the living Leaf, By some not unfrequented Garden-side.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, passage 188

The Vine had struck a fiber: which about If clings my Being--let the Dervish flout; Of my Base metal may be filed a Key That shall unlock the Door he howls without.