A project

Here is the second installment of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam from Edward Fitzgerald’s translation. We are retaining the accents and spelling conventions of Fitgerald’s text in the hope that readers will adapt their reading to an older pronunciation.

If the first nine quatrains amount to introduction, then these eleven quatrains might be considered the statement of theme, the praise of the present moment and its superiority to the supposéd riches of the world.

We invite you to read as you will and offer any commentary that you feel appropriate.

X

With me along some Strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave and Sultán scarce is known,
And pity Sultán Mámúd on his Throne.

XI

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A flask of Wine, a Book of Verse-and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness-
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

XII

“How sweet is mortal Sovranty”-think some:
Others-”How blest the Paradise to come!”
Ah, take the Cash in hand and wave the Rest;
Oh, the brave Music of a distant Drum!

XIII

Look to the Rose that blows about is-”Lo,
Laughing,” she says, “into the World I blow:
At once the silken Tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw.”

XIV

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.

XV

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.

XVI

Think, in this battr’d Caravanserai
Whose doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultán after Sultán with his Pomp
Abode his Hour or two, and went his way.

XVII

The say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshýd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahrám, that great Hunter-the Wild Ass
Stamps o’er his Head, and he lies fast asleep.

XVIII

I sometimes thing that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Cæsar bled;
That ever Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.

XIX

And the delightful Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River’s Lip on which we lean-
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!

XX

Ah, my Belovéd, 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.

Editor’s note: Illustration adapted from “Earth Could Not Answer” by Adelaide Hanscom Leeson at the Wikipedia Commons.