Experts have argued at great length whether FitzGerald's adaptation of Omar's poem is a faithful translation, but the question seemed unimportant to most of its original readers. Writing in 1869, the American academic Charles Eliot Norton felt that the poem 'reads like the latest and freshest expression of the perplexity and of the doubt of the generation to which we ourselves belong.' These nostalgic, yearning lyrics may well have spoken to the Victorians' sense of their own dislocation and paralysis, but the impressions of another place and time summoned up by the languid beauty of the verse were also captivating precisely because of their foreign aura. Certainly the highly polished stanzas of FitzGerald's Rubaiydt both contribute to and reflect a nineteenth-century fascination with the imagined exoticism of distant Oriental cultures.
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RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM / 121 3
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
AWAKE! for Morning in the Bowl of Night Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight: And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.
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5 Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry, 'Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup 'Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry.'
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And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before io The Tavern shouted?'Open then the Door! 'You know how little while we have to stay, 'And, once departed, may return no more.'
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Now the New Year1 reviving old Desires, The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires, 15 Where the WHITE HAND OF MOSES on the Bough Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.2
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Iram3 indeed is gone with all its Rose, And Jamshyad's4 Sev'n-ring'd Cup where no one knows; But still the Vine her ancient Ruby yields, 20 And still a Garden by the Water blows.0 blooms
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And David's Lips are lock't; but in divine High piping Pehlevi,5 with 'Wine! Wine! Wine! 'Red Wine!'?the Nightingale cries to the Rose That yellow Cheek of her's to incarnadine.0 turn red
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25 Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring The Winter Garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To fly?and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.
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And look?a thousand Blossoms with the Day 30 Woke?and a thousand scatter'd into Clay: And this first Summer Month that brings the Rose Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad6 away.
1. In Persia the beginning of spring. 3. Identified by FitzGerald as a royal garden 'now 2. Breathes. Moses, Jesus: plants named in honor sunk somewhere in the Sands of Arabia.' of prophets who came before Mohammed. The 4. A legendary king. Persians believed that Jesus' healing power was in 5. The classical language of Persia. his breath. 6. Founder of a line of Persian kings.
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121 4 / EDWARD FITZGERALD
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But come with old Khayyam, and leave the Lot Of Kaikobad and Kaikhosru7 forgot! 35
Let Rustum8 lay about him as he will, Or Hatim Tai9 cry Supper?heed them not.
10 With me along some Strip of Herbage strown That just divides the desert from the sown, Where name of Slave and Sultan scarce is known, 40 And pity Sultan Mahmud1 on his Throne.
11 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.
12 45 'How sweet is mortal Sovranty!'?think some: Others?'How blest the Paradise to come!' Ah, take the Cash in hand and waive the Rest; Oh, the brave Music of a distant Drum!
13 Look to the Rose that blows about us?'Lo, 50 Laughing,' she says, 'into the World I blow: 'At once the silken Tassel of my Purse Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw.'
14 The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon Turns Ashes?or it prospers; and anon,
55 Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face Lighting a little Hour or two?is gone.
15 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 60 As, buried once, Men want dug up again.
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Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai0 inn Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day, How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp Abode his Hour or two, and went his way.
17 65 They say the Lion and the Lizard keep The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep; And Bahram,2 that great Hunter?the Wild Ass Stamps o'er his Head, and he lies fast asleep.
7. A king. 1. A sultan who conquered India. 8. A warrior. 2. A king who was lost while hunting a wild ass. 9. A
