Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

 

 [Selections]

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou
  Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,

Came shining through the Dusk an Angel Shape

  Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder, and 

He bid me taste of it; and 'twas--the Grape!

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 Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,

Moves on; nor all your Piety nor Wit

  Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

-Omar Khayyam (tr. Edward FitzGerald)

The volume of Shirazi poets I finished recently included several rubaiyat by that group of poets. So that took me back to the most famous of rubaiyat in English, those of Omar Khayyam translated by Edward FitzGerald.

Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) was a noted astronomer in Nishapur, Iran, who also wrote poetry. He's two centuries earlier than the Shirazi poets, and from the other end of the country.

 

Fitzgerald's translations are supposed to be pretty free. He was serial rewriter of his own work, and there are five editions of the Rubaiyat. I selected the version I liked the best and paid no attention to edition...

Two of these are among the most famous of them and the other two were ones that just struck me on this reading. The illustration is by Edmund Dulac (illustrating the first quatrain quoted) and comes from an edition that was my father's.