THE RUBA’

IYAT

O MA R K H AYYAMBE ING

A Facsimile of the Manuscript in the B odleian Library at Oxford,

with a Transcript into modern Persian Characters,

TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES,AND A B IBLIOGRAPHY , AND SOME SIDELIGHTS

UPON EDWARD F ITZGERALD’S POEM

EDWAR D H ERON -A LLEN

SECOND ED IT ION

Carefully Revised and considerably Enlarged

M i c s»

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAG I

Introduc tion i—xlu

Photographic facsim ile of MS .

Bibliographica l reference s . for abbreviations in the

Facsim ile pages with transcript , transla tion .

notes

Bibliography of Omar Khayyam

Some Sidelights upon Edward Fits '

ald'

s Poem .

Th e Rnba’

iyat of Omar Khayyam

PREFATORY NOTE TO THE SECOND

ED IT ION

I conra ss that I am surprised— and agreeably so—to

find that , within six months of the first publication of this

volume , a second and larger edition is called for. I am not ,

however-[ so blinded with satis faction as not to realize that the

success of my book has been brought about, not so much by

any intrins ic merits of its own , as by the ever-widen ing

int erest tha t is felt in the matchless poem of FitzGerald

which was primarily re spons ible for its appearance . I have

taken advan tage of the opportunity thus afforded m e to make

several revis ions sugges ted by scho larly crit ics , and to add a

cons iderable mass of materia l which was no t se lected, or not

discovered , in January last . I am glad to have found this

further occasion for address ing my readers , if for no other

reason than to record my indebtednes s to Pro fessor E .

Den ison Ross , who has no t only he lped m e very greatly with

the revis ion , but has had the kindness to correct the proo fs of

this edition for me during my abse nce from England .

EDWARD HERON -ALLEN .

VEN ICE ,

M ay, 1898 .

Wrru a mthefic insistenm eqnalled only by that with

Charles ’s head intruded upon the memorial of

Mr. Dick, a few biographical det ails concern ing the Lik of

( ibis rid-din Abe l Path ’

Omar bin I brahim Al Khayyam ‘

(as recorded in the Tes tament of Nifi m uI M nlk, and citd

thw ce in M irkhond'

s H istoryol the Assassins ,’ in Khm dm h

’

s

Habib ns -Siyar, m d in the Dabist i nfi have in truded npon theprefatory excnrsions of almost every anthor, poet , or a

m 'm m 'm m m h m la m

d w el l ing ,““Na -t h h m on pt a n ys :“Et t aul“ m o“. w W m a t -fi d

m u m p u wm am tm yh m d dn m v fi d u

M M M d hh h h r. M fi s m u . KM yyh —‘m m '

The m -yu it m the m

m y d m m w h fli‘ a m m m d“ ( a th w zfi'

d l z dn flam fia -M L‘ n- km( c h m -PL

” M M M m -irh mem m :“Th e“w a h M

'

M M W M M b Q)

d fi Cd a ta MS b M W ' “3 8m . . wt fl hfl fl l im ‘O- rm ’

a d n dm m l h in h mM C“.

‘u m ’

b m b m -d m d

m ay : ‘M d m '

a b a l m m h m"

a. NW h M M W M “M at th e w ;

l a t -Joan. (mu-a rm a mM )

5 “W h a m q m w t -fi a d v fi d

h u M b M i sw - d n h h—n vmm bym m mA m m u n m a u a rm m u h m by m m

ii I ntroduction

for them . Broadly spea king, these may be

the story of the tripart ite agreemen t for theirtage of Omar Khayyam with N izam ul M ulk an

Sabah : his reform of the calendar ; the criticalShahrastani ; the story of his apparition to

and the one about his tomb related by his pupil, Nizami ofSamarcand . I t may be furt her observed that recent criticismhas cast grave doubts upon the au then ticity of these deta ils .

I n li ke manner, s ince the death of Mr. FitzGerald, we m ay

apply the same observation to the biographical details of

his life, which have been s ifted from h is own charm inglett ers , or strained from the mass of magazine literature thathas appeared during the interven ing periods , to appear as

in tegral portions of introductions, ever increas ing in bulk andwe ight .

As it is improbable that this work will reach the hands of,or at anyrate be seriously studied by, anyone who has not readEdward FitzGerald ’

s own preface to his poem , and as it is unlikely that any student will read this volum e unless his intere stia that poem has been sufficient to have caused him to read the“Le t ters and Literary Remains ofEdward FitzGerald ," I willallow myself to preserve a discree t s ilence upon these points ,and will not burden my introduction with stories that are

already wearisomely fam iliar to my readers . I would refer

those who desire to study the magazine literature of the subjectto the articles ofMr. Go sse (Fortnightly R eview, july, Mr.

Groome (B lackwood‘

s M agazine, Nov ember, Mr. C lodd

(English I llustrated M agazine, February, and Mr. SchiltzWilson (Contemporary R eview, March, For the rest , th eenquirer is referred to the Bibliographical Appendix and to

Poole 's I ndex of Periodical Literature .

There rem ains at our disposal the story o t how the firs tedit ion of FitzGerald

’

s poem fell from grace to the penny box ,and rose thence to twenty guineas per copy—and an honouredanecdotage . For the details of this progression the reader isreferred to the introduction to Mr. J . H . M cCart hy

’

s prose

I ntroduction i i i

version, which is , as far as my studies have taken me , the mostscholarly, the mos t ent hus ias t ic, and the most grace ful essayupon these more than triturated themes that has ye t seen the

light . (Vide Term inal Essay, p . Ofcritical essays uponFitzGerald

’

s poem , probably the bes t is that of Mr. Keene

(Macmillan’

s M agazine, November, though it will presently be seen that I disagree with the views he has expressedand of essays ex cathedrd—that is to say, wri tten by orientalscholars , s ince the fundamen tal essay of Professor Cowe ll(Calcutta R eview, March , 1858) nothing has surpassed that ofProfessor Pickering (National R eview, December,

Apart , however, from the anecdotal his tory of this collection of quatrains , and of the matchless poem which theyinspired, there is a chapter of history worthy our careful consideration—the chapter conta in ing the history of the period extending from about A.D . 1 050-60 , within which lim its the birthof Omar Khayyam has by consent of his historiographers beenfixed, until the year 1 1 23(A H . when his death is recordedupon more or less contemporaneous authority . Within thisperiod ourpoet -mathematician lived , and from the events ofthatperiod—events which were st irring I slam to the foundation ofits

faith—came influences which may have t inged the philosophypreached by the singer. The internal evidence of the collectionnegatives the idea that the quatrains were written at one timeas components of a consecutive whole , and suggests that theywere written at intervals extending over the whole period or

Om ar’

s life , and co llected , generally into the consecutivealphabetical, or familiar diwan form , at the end of his life ,or, as is more probable , after his death . I n po int of fact , Ith ink it not unlikely that most ofhis quatrains were transm ittedas tradit ional epigrams, and collected at the instance of la terpoets such as Hafiz or Jam i, or h is pupil Nizami, many of

whose recollections of Omar’

s quatrains, strongly imbued withthe proclivities of the ir recorders , have passed into currencyas the ipsissirna verba of Omar, among the volum inous col

b—z

iv I ntroduction

lections of quatrains which , during five centuries , have beenbrought together and issued from t ime to time as his work .

I t is reasonable to assum e that pass ing events had littleor no influence upon Omar and his work until, at earlies t,A.D . 1076, when the conques t of Jerusalem by the Turks ledto that protracted convuls ion of the M uhammadan worldwhose opening phase was the First Crusade .

1 The SultanToghrul Beg had been succeeded in 1063by Alp Arslan, who

extended h is dom inion from the Mediterranean Sea to CentralAsia, and, be ing assas s inated on Christmas Day, 1072, was

succeeded by his son Mal ik Shah , the patron and protectorof Omar Khayyam . No more perfect picture of the era of

Omar can be found than that conta ined in the MakamAt

(or“Assemblies of El Hariri the s ilk merchant, who , born

in Bassorah in 1054, and dying in 1 1 22, wrote the book of

wh ich Professor Chenery and Dr. Steingass have given us

a masterly translation .

’ T he origin of this book was ,we are told, his accidental m eeting with one of the few

survivors of the massacre of Serfij, when that city was

attacked and des troyed by Baldwin, bro ther of Godfrey of

Bouillon, in the year 1098, during the period when be ruledthe Christ ian Principali ty of Edessa .

’ I n 1084 the conquestof As ia M inor may be said to have been completed by theTurks , in 1 088 began the series of persecutions of Christianpilgrim s to Jerusalem which led to the Crusades , and, in

1092, Malik Shah died, having, in addition to h is territorialconques ts , reformed the calendar by means of the labours of

e ight learned m en, of whom Omar was one , and inaugurated,by the correct ion of all errors of reckon ing, e ither past orfuture , the Jalali era, a compu tation of time which, says

1 . For a simplified account. see" Th e Crusade ia the " Story of the

Nations series . by T . A . Archer and c . L. Kingstord . London and New

York. 1894.

a .

“The Assemblies of Al Hadri . Io ndon . 1867 . This edition con

tained only twenty- six M b lies,“but the work has now been completed by

Dr. Steinm s for the subscribers to th e Orieu tal Trans lation Fund.3. Aceording to some authoritles . the conquests of Syrla and Palestine and

the Empire of the far East were ac complished by Malik Shah (c . 1074 but

th is doee not concern us in this place.

I ntroduction

G ibbon , surpassed the Julian , and approached the accuracyof the Gregorian style .

‘ I t is difficult to resist the temptation totouch upon som e of the leading episodes of th is periodthe disgrace of N izi m ul M ulk ; the success ive re igns of the

Seljuk Sultans , Mahmud Bargiyaruk MalikShah I I . M uhammad Sanjar and

the period of comparative tranqu illity which supervened ,during which Omar died ’ (1 1 23) in retirement and philosophical repose at Naishap ur, his declining years so ftenedby the compan ions, the roses , and the wine whose Canticlehe sang to such last ing purpose , within s ight of the s tillbeautiful and fert ile valley ofMeshed in Khorasan , that nurseryof Pers ian song, which boas ted itse lf the birthplace in turn of

Firdausi, of Asadi, of Ferid ud-di'

n’Attar, of Jalal-ud odin

Rumi, of Jami, of Hatif‘

i, and many others , and which may

j us tly be named the Pers ian Parnassus .

I n the Wes t a sharp line ofdemarcation is ap t to be drawnbetween men of thought and men of action . The names of a

few so ldier-poe ts and art isan-philosophers surge in the m indas one writes this, bu t these are few and far be tween . I t has

not been so in the Eas t . Omar the tent-maker, Attar the

druggist occur to one’

s mind for nobile fratrmn, and whatbe tter examples could be cited than Omar the Mugheri(who has been confused ere now with our Omar),

“the noble

man, the warrior. the libert ine , bu t above all the poet—the

Don Juan of Mecca, the Ovid of Arabia and the Eas t—Omar

1 .

"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire . chap. lvii. Vil e alsoDr. Hyde ‘

s work (p. chap. xvi . pp. 200-2 1 1 . M r. B tnning (vide note 2.

p. xxv . ) states that thls workwas done under the auspices of Sultan Jalal-ud -dtn

ins ta d of the umd five ehould be added, so as to mnke up the commete eolaryear. which coneequently corru ponds eloselywith ourcregorian year. (Vol. ii . ,9 3074

2. A. Houtum -Schindler. in a le tter to the Academy (24th January. 1885).statu that Omar died ln /io 1 134 , ooer one hnndm t ycm old ; but he does no t

give hls authority for this iuformation.

I ntroduction vii

era of religious hys teria in which he lived) by the courageof his own opinions—ih which respect, I think, Shahras taniappreciated his peculiar attitude— but pro foundly imbuedw ith the po ss ible beauty of the present world , apart fromall u lterior spec ulations , and the everlast ing and unendablesearch after the abso lute knowledge of truth .

‘ This trai t in hisindividuality led him o ft en into amazing obscurity ofme taphor,an obscurity, however, that a modern translator resents theless when he reflects tha t it was in most ins tances the objectand inten t ion of the poet . His attitude rem inds us , as a

wri ter in Fraser’

s M agazine for June , 1 870, has observed , of

the saying of the French philosopher, Royer-Collard, to the

effect that philosophy is the art of tracing back human ignoranceto its founta in-head .

“A po int which strikes one more forcibly than any ot her

after s tudying many hundreds of q uatra ins composed by, or

attributed to , him , is , that though the sensuo us imageryinseparable from Pers ian belles -lettres is abundantly presentin his work, it is singularly free from that coarseness—tha twealth of ignoble illustration and licentious anecdo te wh i chrenderpractically all Pers ian poem s and romances unsu itable forears po lite in an un expurgated form . We find in h is verses ,

"

says Pro fessor Cowe ll, “a tota lly differen t character to tha twhich we should naturally have expected from the preva ilinghabit of thought in which he lived . Every o ther poe t ofPers ia has written too m uch—even her noblest sons of gen iusweary with the ir prolixity . The language has a fatal facilityof rhyme , which makes it eas ier to write in verse than in

prose , and every author heaps volumes on vo lumes , until heburies him self and his reader beneath the ir we ight . Our

mathematician is the one so li tary exception . He has left

1 . Mr. W . L. Phelps . in an able article in Tke Nm Englander

(New Haven . Conn ). vol . all: 1888. draws a scholarly pan lle l between Omar

2. Vide “Académie de Paris. Faculté dee la t tree. Cours de l'

I-l is toire

de la Philosophie Moderne . Premiere lecon de la troisieme année . P. P.

Royer-Co llard .

vi ii I ntroduction

fewer lines than Gray . Were i t no t that one ins tinctivelyreco ils from instituting even a pass ing comparison betweenOmar and the late Mr. Tupper, one would be inclined to writehim down the Sultan of proverbial philosophers , an attributewhich is generally enhanced by the want of sequence of idea inseparable from the diwan form ofpoet ic arrangement , in whichthe quatrains follow one another strictly according to the alphabe tical sequence of the ir rhym e -endings and without regardto the series of thoughts expressed , or to the pictures evolved .

A primary difficulty which confronts the student of OmarKhayyam is th e great difficulty and doubt which exists as towhich of the ruba ’iya t have reached us in a form mos t nearlyapproaching tha t in which they left the master's hand .

D iligent search in the older cities of Central As ia, wherePers ian is the language , or at least the elegant s tudy of the

more cultured classes , may bring to light some MS . that may

fa irly be regarded as a Codex, and serve as the po int ofdeparture for the student . At present the oldes t MS . availablefor the st udent is that of the year A.H . 865(A.D. in the

Bodle ian Library at Oxford, which is reproduced by photography, transcribed, and translated in the present volume . I t

was discovered among an uncatalogued mass ofOriental MSS . ,

form ing the Ouseley co llection in 1856 by Profes sorCowell,whomade a transcript of it ,which transcript lies be fore me , and hasbeen of the greates t ass istance t0

.

me in deciphering the MS .

The original MS . is probably one of the mos t beaut ifulPers ian MSS . of its age

‘ in existence , and is written uponthick yellow paper in purple -black ink, pro fusely powderedw ith gold . These gold spots have frequently confused the

workman who made the line -blocks which accompany mytran slation, a further elem ent of difficulty be ing introducedby the fact that the po ints are often merged into the borders ,and therefore invis ible in the line -blocks . My publishers,however, have with great liberal ity had executed for me , in

1 . I t is written . according to the Catalogue , in Nasta‘lik; bu t I shou ld beinc lined to describe it as written in a hand midway between Nasta'lik and

https://www.forgottenbooks.com/join

I ntroduc tion

ment Persan . The first , which is dated 920 (A. O .

is beautifully wri tten in Nas ta ’

lik be tween blue and gold linesand an ornamental heading in red , blue , and go ld . I t co ntains2 13ruba ’ iya t . The second M S . form s part ofa large co llection 01poems transcribed by the sam e hand, the term inal leaf ofw hichbears the following inscription The copying ofthese quatrainswas finished by the aid of God and by the excellence of his

ass istance , the fiftee nth day of the month of jumada, theseco nd of the year 934 1 6th February,This MS . is written in Nas ta ’

lik be tween blue ruled borders ,and presents, like the first cited MS . , the peculiarity that theruba ’iyat are no t in alphabe tical or d‘

iwan order. The thirdMS . also form s part of a collection of poem s , dated AM . 937(A.O . written in a nea t Nas ta ’

li k, in a Turkish handwhich is extremely difficul t to read . Another MS . in thislibrary has been cited, but Mons . 0mont , the keeper of the

Oriental MSS . , inform s me that it has been m iss ing formanyyears . I n addition, there are e ight ruba ’ iyat written in a

handwri ting of the late n inth or early tenth century, A.H . , uponthe blank leaves of a diwan of Emad which is dated A .H . 920 ;

six in an eleve nth-century handwri ting in a collection ofpoems ,undated ; and th irty-one in a fine MS . of the Atash Kadah of

Azr dated A. H . 1 2 17 (A.O. in the colophon of which Azris described as afsah «it mu

’

dsirin ,

“the most e loquent of con

temporaries ,” indicating that he was then alive . I t w ill beobserved, therefore , that th e Bodle ian MS . is no t only the

earlies t MS . known , but is one ofthe very fewwhich are completein them selves , and do no t form part of co llections in bdydz or

commonplace books . There are a considerable number of

later MSS . in various publi c libraries , in which the numberof the qua trains is swelled by the addition of a vas t num berwhich are for the most part e ither variants of those in the

earlier MSS . , or frank rep etitions of one ano ther,‘ unt ilwe arrive at the comparatively modern Cambridge MS . ,

in which the ruba'iya t reach the alarming total of 80 1 .

r. l have found quatrains repeated even in the Fat is mS. of mu . 934(cg . qq . 154 and

I ntroduction xi

Of these th e most valuable and interesting is , I think ,the MS. No . 1548 in the Bengal As iatic Society’

s Libraryat Calcutta , and it is especially interes ting to English s tudentsas having been the principal o ther authority consulted byPro fessor Cowell when writ ing h is art icle in the CalcuttaReview, and used by Edward FitzGerald in the constructionof his poem. Professor Cowell has kindly placed his copy ofthis MS . at my disposal for the purposes of this work. (Vida

Term inal Essay, p . At the moment that the firstedition was leaving the press , I rece ived thrmg h the courtesyand pains of Mr. A . S . Pringle , D irector of I ndian Records inthe Home Department at Calcutta , a copy of a very importan t MS . once the property of one Maulavi Khuda BakshKhan Bahadur, by whom it had been presented to the publiclibrary at Bankipur. I t form s (as usual) part of a collectionof literary extracts , written by two I ndian scribes in the year96 : mu . I t contains 604 ruba ’ iyat , of which 8 : are not to

be found in any of the MSS . and other collect ions noted inmy Bibliographical References (p . I t will be observedthere fore that, for its age , this is t he largest collection thathas hitherto been found, and , on account of the large numberofruba ’iyat no t found elsewhere , one of the mos t important .I t will also he remarked by the studen t tha t, as a general rule ,the readings of this MS. are ident ical with those of the

Bodle ian MS . , even when all other texts are at variance withit, and that the meaning is more clear in this MS . than inany o ther under cons iderat ion . There are over 40 ruba ’ iyatin the Bodle ian MS . that are not in this MS . , so that thesetwo alone give us nearly 650 ruba ’ iyat, of a date no t laterthan 1553A.O.

Scarcely less important than the MSS . are the litho~graphed editions of Teheran, Calcutta, Lucknow, Bombay,and Tabriz, from the first of which Mons . N icolas made

his printed text ,‘ and from the last of which Professorr. l t would ill-heeeem rne to criticiae ad ven ely so valuahle and in many

respect-scholarly a workas that ofM ons . Nicolaa hut it must he admlt ted thatthe accuracy of his translation . in many placem leaves much to he deeired .

Where the meaning is more than ord inarily obscure , he generally shirks the

xi i I ntroduction

Schuchovsky, of St . Petersburg . made his lithographededition .

‘ These will he found duly noted in the Bibliograph ical References (p . and in the Bibliography(p . For the European student the text and translationof Mons . N icolas is probably the bes t, though as a text

alone , that of Mr. Whinfield, issued by Messrs . Trtlbner in

1883, is unsurpassed . This text Mr. Wh infield framed froma comparison of the Bodle ian , the Calcutta, and the two

I ndia Office MSS the Calcutta and Lucknow lithographs,and the printed editions of MM . B lochmann and Nicolas .

I t may seem churlish to look so valuable a text in the foo tnotes (so to speak), but regard be ing had to the very greatdiversities existing in the various texts , it is a great pitythat Mr. Whinfield did not pursue a sys tem of numberingthe quatrains in his authori t ies , and so save the conscientiousstudent a world of troublesome labour.’ A very interestingcollection of quatrains attribut ed to Omar is included in thatpan theon of Pers ian poetry, the Atash Kadah of Hajj i LutfAli Beg of I sfahan , known as Azr, a collection numberingthirty~one quatrains, of which ten are represented in the

translation and merelygives the intention of the original . and the aa istanoe that

M r. Mccarthy would seem . from internal evidence, to have derived from Mons .

Nicolas'

s translation . has caused the same obeervation to he applicahleto hh prose

rendering . Mons . Nicolas was essen tially a Sufi. and dragged in Sufistic interprev

tations wherever he oould . attributing a mys tic or divine interpre tatiou to Omar‘

s

most ohviously materialistic passages , by way ot'

apology for the “sensualite

quelquefoia révoltante ,"which has passed into a proverh among students om ar.

Edward FitzGerald dealt at length with th is amiable weakness fifone may so call

it) in the prefaoe to his aecond and suheequen t editions . The reader is referredto Nicolas

‘

s no te s on p . rog. note s on p . 143. note 1 cu p . r7o . note 4 on p. 17 1 .and note a on p . 183ofhis translation . to quote only five ou t of s great numher oi

euch notes . The two last refer to qq . 128 and r37 0f the Bodleian quatrains.

a. I t must he horm in mind that in the M SS and lithographs the

ruha'

im m mm nw and whm in me w um of this vd ume l reiu w

them hy numhert must he understood that I am r-eierring to numhers l have

myseli afixed in my oopies to dmplify the work of re ierenoe. Thua therefore .

ii Mr. Whinfield had numhered his Lucknow lithogn ph (for instanoe) hisnumbers would dimer from mine. ” I have used a later editionm ontaining more

ruha‘

iyat than his .

I ntroduction xiii

Bodleian MS .

‘and twenty-one are of difierent , and probably

later, orig in .

”The Paris MS of this work has already been

referred to . Azr was not born until A . D. 17zz, and his“new

”quatrains are as a whole very inferior to those in

this MS . Everything, therefore , seems t0 point to the fact

MS . by unserupnlons scfibeq who ho ldly repeated quatrains ,

were probably paid“by the piece ; by religious objectors,who

and by editors who have sought to give their work the hn

porh nce of mere bulk.

tains 763, and my owu copy, a re -issue lithographed in 1894,

oontains 770 . Mrs ]eesie E. Cade ll, who made the quatra ins

life , and published the results of her labours in Frmer's

Magazine (May, 1879), co llated all the aut horities to he mundin puhlic librarie s in Eum pe , and found over twelve hundred

catalogue ot'

authorities availahle to the stndeut in the B ih lio

g ap hical Appench’

x. Poww ow .

A history of this poem in its most wide ly accepee d

of a Bibliographical Essay, which would take us beyondthe purpom of an Introduction . A few words on the subje ct

r. Theoe are Noa x. ro3. 1oa. rog, 136 . and 15 . Per fect

th e Bodleian MS quau‘im in the follo-h g pagea

z. The editiom of rfifio and rBSr, lithog aphed by Fath -al-Kirim, at

Bnmhey, onntain qz qnauaine. ofwh ieh t3are w ted in the Bodld an MS .

‘me extra rr qnatraina are evidm tly reeen t ly added to the colleetlon .

xiv I ntroduction

Dr. Thomas Hyde , Regius Pro fes sor of Hebrew and Arabic atOxford , who , in his Vet erum Persarum e t Parth orum , et

Medorom religionis historia”(Oxford , 1700 . 2nd edition ,

recounts the story of the apparition of Omar, after his death,to his mo ther, and h is recital of the well-known quatrain to

her (side post, note to q . The firs t to make an extendedst udy of the quatrains was Von Hammer-Purgstall, who , inhis Geschichte der schonen Redekunste Pers iens ”

(V ienna,gave verse -translat ions of twenty-five quatrains , but

does not state from what MS . he translated . FriedrichRocket t , who died in 1 866 , included two qua trains in h is

Grammatik, Poet ik und Rhetori k der Perser" (published at

Gotha in and Sir Gore Ouseley, gave th e same numberin his Biographical Notices of Pers ian Poets (London,

one of which was q . 89, post. Save for the pamphle tin which Garcin de Tassy, in 1857, forestalled FitzGerald , frommaterials derived from him , this brings us to the time whenOmar was taken in hand by Professor Cowell and Edward

I t will not , I think, he un interes ting to gather from the

letters written by Edward FitzGerald to h is friends , and

recently published by Messrs . Macm illan ,

l his own account ofthe Pers ian studies that culm inated in the production of

the poem by which , it may fairly be said, the Ruba ’ iyat ofOmar Khayyam became known to European readers .

“I n

1845 it is clear that he had no leaning towards orien tal sub

jec ts ; indeed, in a le tter to Frederick Tennyson (6th February,1845) he says

1 . Letters of Edward FitzGerald (edited by W. Aldis Wright). London2 vols . Extrac ted from L. R .

a. I wish , in this p lsce . to record my sinoere thanks to M r. AldisWrigh t and M essrs . Macmillan ior their psrmission . readily granted me to

rep rint th e following volum inous ex tracts from their publication . The ir editionofFitzGerald

‘

s works . referred to throughout thisworkas“L. is indispensable

to the stodent ol the poem . for all I-‘itsGer-ald

'

s workwas more or less tinged

by his studies of Omar Khayyl m .

xvi I ntroduction

Later (s7th De cember, 1853) he writes to F . Tennyson

I also amuse myself with poking out some Pers ian whichE . Cowell would inaugurate me with ; I go on with it because it isa point in common with h im and enable s us to study a little toge ther.

After mastering the rudiments, FitzGerald firs t addressedhimself seriously to jami

'

s poem of Salaman and Absal ;Professor Cowell tells me (toc . cit .)

I read Jumi's Salimi n and Absi l with him at Oxford in

1854 and’

55, which he translated and published in 1856 . J. W.

Parker and Son were the publishers .‘ The Life of 1am appeared

in that volume .

Accordingly, we find FitzGerald writing to Cowell in 1855,

in reply to a letter concerning HafizAny such translation of such a writer as Hafiz by you into

pure, sweet and partially meaeured prose' must be be tter than

what I am do ing forJi nn, whose ingenuous prattle I am stiltinginto too Miltonic verse . Th is l am very sure of. But it is done .

In the earlies t days of 1856 the translation of Salamanand Absal was for practical purpose s complete , and FitzGeraldwrites to Cowell :

I send you a sketch of jami's Life , which cut , correc t andannotate as you like . Where there was so little to tell, I have

brought in all th e fine names and extra bits l could to give it alittle sparkle . There is very little after all ; I have spread it over

paper to give you room to note upon it . Only take care not to

lose either these or yes terday's papers, for my terror at go ing over

You must put in the corrected Notice about th e SultanHussein. bo th in the Memoir and in the Note to the Poem . The

thin,“i m m a tu rity Preliminary Notioe ; and would

gladlydedicate the litt le bookto you by namenvith due acknowledgment , did I thinkth e world would take it for a compliment toyou . But thongh l like the version, and you like it, we know very

t .

° ° Salimsn and Abd l. an Allegot-

y. Translated tmm tbe Persian of

Jimi . London . 1856. A reprint of th is edition was made in 187 t hy Cowell

s . Th is evidently re iers to the article upon mfis cited in note s . p . xv:

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xviii I atroductioe

Hammer? and gone on with Jimi and Nizimi. But my greatped ermm ee an liee in the last five weeks sinoe l have been alone

herm when l wrote to Napoleon Newton‘to ask him to lend me

hie MS ofAttk’

s Mantic nt tair; and , with the help of Garc in de

Tam , have nearly made out about two thirds of it. For it hasgra tlymteresteq though l confess it is always an old story.

On the xat h March , 1857, FitzGerald writes to Cowell

To-day l have been writing twenty pages ofa metrical sketchof the ll antieJor snch uses as I told you of. I t is an amusement

to me to take what liberties I like with theee Persians , who (as Ithink) are not poets enough to frighten one from such excursions,and whe really do want a little art to shape them . I don

’

t speakofJelt leddin.‘whom l know so little of (enough to sh ow me that

he is no great artist, however), n0r of li i fiz. whose best is untrans

la table, because he is the best musician of words . Old Johnson

must go to the origlnal to relish them. I am sure that what

Tennyson sald to you is true z that flifiz is th e most Eastern—or,

he should have said most Persian—c t the Persians . H e is the

best representa tive of their character, whether his Saki and Winehe real or mystical . Their religlon and philosophy is soon seen

through . and always seems to me cuckooed over like a borrowedthing, which people, once having got , don’t know how to paradeenough . To be sure their Roses and N ightingales are repeatedenough ; but R ifle and old Omar Khayyim ring like true metalThe phllOOOphy of the la tter is, alas ! one that never fails in theworld . To day is ours." etc .

Wh lle 1 thinkof it, why la th e m an thn Apolorne of Atttr

once quoted by Falconer) supposed to have lost God ? Did the

Persians sgre e with eometh ing l remember in Plato about the sea

and all in it being an inferior nature ? in spite ofHomer’

s DivineOcean," etc .

This idea appea rs to have struck FitzGerald so much thathe introduced it into the 33rd stanza of his Omar. ProfessorCowell. writing on the subject to Mr. Aldis Wright, says :

1 . Joseph von Hammer. “Der Diwan von Mohammed Schemsed -dtn

l isfis"

Alba -sew vonJ. von H. Stuttgart. 1812. 2 vols. t ame .

s . The infiuence which this study of the

Mantik ut tair had upon Fitsgerald'

s parsphrsse of the ruhs'

iyat will be seenla the notes to the translation post .

3. More than one critic has called attention to the fac t that so care ful ascho lar as FitzGer-ald should have given this mis trans literation ol the name o fJall loud-diu Rum l .

I ntroduction xix

I well remember showing it to Fitzgerald, and reading it withhim in his early Pers ian days at Oxford in 1855. I laughed at th equaintness ; but th e idea se ized his imagination from the first , andlike Virgil with Ennius ’

s rough jewe ls , his genius de tected goldwhere I had onlyseen tinsel . He has made two grand lines out ofit .‘

FitzGerald’

s correspondence with Garcin de Tassy wouldappear to have comm enced about this period, and on the

29th March , 1857, he writes to Cowell , in a letter referringto other oriental translat ions

Well ; and l have had a note from Garcin de Tassy, whom Ihad asked if he knew oi any copy oi Omar Khayyi m in all th e

Paris libraries ; he writes : “I have made by means of a friend,"etc . But I shall enclose his note to am use you . Nowwhat I meanto do is , in return for his po liteness to me . to copy out as well asI can th e Te trast ichs as you copied them for me , and send themas a presen t to De Tassy. Perhaps he will edit them . I should notwish him to do so ii th ere were any chance oi your ever doing itbut i don't think you will he lp on th e old Panthe ist. and De Tassyreally, afler what he is doing for the Mantis , deserves to malts th eacquaintance of this remarkable little fe llow. indeed , I thinkyou will be pleased that l should do this . Now ior some more

E schylus.

Friday. April n th —l have been for the last five days with mybrother at Twickenham : during which time I really copied out

Omar Khayytm , in a way ! and shall tooday post it as a“cadeau

"

to Garcin de Tasey in return for his courtesy to me . l am airaid

a bad re turn ; for my M S . is but badly wri tten , and it wouldperhaps more plague than profit an English “

savant ” to havesuch a present made him . But a Frenchman gets over all thisvery lightly. Garc in de Tans y te lls me he has printed fourthousand lines of the Mantle .

And in a letter enclosed in this one for Mrs . Cowell,he says :

You may give him (is . E . B . C .) th e enclosed instead of a

former le tter from th e same G . de T . For is it not odd h e shou ldnot have time to read a dozen of those 150 te tras tichs ? I poin tedout such a dozen to him of the best , and told him ifhe liked them .

l would try and get th e res t better written for him than I couldwrite . l had also told him that the whole th ing came from

E . B C . , and l now write to tell him l have no sort oi intention of

x. The firs t two linea oi F. v . 33.

n I'M “

M a m b the jm m l d fiafim l nor l suppose a B . C .

um ; Qde M ia vea-y eivil to m however.

W M W de Tm y,W that hia first note about Omar

Khaxyam was‘t in haste.

”that he had read some of th e tetrastich s .

wbieb ho h b na va ym cult—onme difiiculties which are pro

bably errors of the “copil t

": and he proposes his writing an

article in theJW Asiofiqu on it , in wh ich he will“honourably

l now write to deprecate d ]

yet know enough of the matter ; that l do not wish E. B . C . to be

mu le answerable for errors wh lch E . F. G . (the“copist ") may

have made ; and tbat E. F. G . neither merits nor desires any

in the following mon th (7th May, 1857) he wri tes to

CowellTW l have a note irom the great De

‘

l‘assy, which ah

nounces :“hiy dear 8ir, - Deiinitive ly l have wfi tten a littie paper

upon Ow . with aome quotationa taken hm and there at random ,

avoiding only the too badly-sounding Ruba iyat. l have read thatpaper hetero the Persian Ambassador and suite, at a meeting of

the Oriental Societym i which l am Vice-Presidenh the Duc de

pleaaod with my quotationa. So you see l have done the part ofan

ill aubjoct iu helping France to lngratiate herselfwith Persia whenEngland migh t have had the start . l suppose it prohable Ferulth

Khan himn lfhad never read or perhaps heard ot'

Omar. l thinl:

l told you in my ln t that l had deeired b e’

l‘

assy to say nothing

may you care to be namod with Omar at all . l hope the French

man will attend to my desire ; and l dare say he wilh as be willthen have all credit to himaelf. He says he oannot malre out the

metre of tho Rubaiyat at alh never cod d, though“l am enough

l . Tho journal oi m aloodonl Afiatic Soch y ia hen rd u -u d to znot

quently publiahed. vw m w m mu g).

a. Accordinglyd n fi do h osy‘s pnn pble t m d nrticie td b mb lingu phy)

nodulan cppearing to be b e’

h ssy’

a own .

I ntroduction xxi

When in Bediordshire, I pu t away almost all boo ks , exceptOmar Khayyam , which I could not he lp loo king over in a paddoc kcovered with butt erc ups and brushed by a de licious breeze , whilea dainty racing filly of W . Browne ’

s came startling up to wonderand m ill about me . Temp us es t quo Orientis , Aura mundusrenovatur,Quo de fonte pluviali, dulcis Imber reseratur: M usi

mamas undecumque ramos insuper sp lendescit . ju n - spiritusquesalutaris terram pervagatur,

“which is to be read as Mon kishLatin , like “Dies lrae ,

"etc . , re ta ining the I talian value of the

vowels , not th e class ical . You will think me a perfec tly Aristophanic o ld man when I tell you how mu y of Omar l could not

he lp running into such bad La tin .‘ I should not confide such

fo llies but to you ,who won't think them so , and who will be pleased

at least with my still harping on our old studies . You would besorry, too , to think that Omarbreathes a sort of consolation to me !Poor fe llow ; I think of him and O liver Basse lin ' and Anacreon ;lighter shadows among the shades , perhaps . overwhich Lucre tiuspresides so grimly .

Thursday, j am: 1 I lla—Your le tter ofApril is come to hand, verywelcome ; and I am expecting th e MS . Omar.which I have writ tenabout to London .

‘ And now with respect to your proposed FraserPaper on Omar. You see , a few lines back, I talk of some lazyLatin versions of his Tetrastichs , giving one clumsy example . Now

I shall rub up a few more of those l have sketched in the same

manner. in order to see if you approve.

The letter breaks ofl'

abruptly at this po int , but is con

tinued ou the 23rd of Junej am: a3rd .

— I begin another letter because I am looking intothe Omar MS. yo u have sen t me , and shall perhaps make some

notes and enquiries as I go on . I had not intended to do so till Ih ad looked all over and tried to make out what I cou ld of it ; sinceit is both pleasant to onese lf to find out for onese lf if poss ible , and

r. we: R uba ‘i No . 13. pm .

a . M r. Herbert W. Greene . of Magdalen College . Oxford, has completedthis task. and turned FitzGerald '

s Omar into a mos t elegant and charm ingvolume of eleg

'lacs . private ly printed for him .—Vida the Bibliography (No .

3. An apt illustration of the extent and breadth of FitzGerald'

s reading.Many of Omar‘

s quatrains mus t have reminded him of Olivier Basselin ’

s line(Vaux de v it o . xvii ). "Les morts ne boivent plus dedans la sépulture .

"I am

surprh d that the analogy between Omar and Herrick never seems to have

struckFitrGerald . Compare with this . for ins tance . Herrick'

s Anacreontike

(Ra mada )Born I was to he old .

And ior to die here Still I be BouaingAfter that . in the mould For l know. in the

‘

l‘

omhs

Long for to lye here . There'

s no Carouaing .

Several such analogies are cited in the notes to the qua trains .

4 . The copy oi the M S . in the Bengal Asiatic Society'

s u braryat Calcu tta

to which l have reierred above .

xxii I”in duction

also sa ves trouble to one ‘s friends . But yet it will keep me talking

with you as l go alongzand if i find i say silly thinga or clear updifi culties ior myself before i close my letteflwhich has a month

whole process of blunder. l thinkthis MS. furnishes some oppor

tunities for one’

s critical faculties , and so is a good exercise £or

them , if one wanted such ! I mus t also tell you that Borrow ‘

is p eatly delighted with your MS. of Omar. which I showed himdelighted at the tersenesa, so unusual in Oriental verse . But his

eyes are ap t to cloud ; and his wiie has been obiiged , he tells mc,

to carry oil'

even the lit tie Omar out ofreach ot'

them ior a whiie .

On July xsl he addsJuly rah—June over ! A thing i think ofwith Omar like sorrow.

And the roses here are blowing—and going—as abundantly as evenin Persia. I am still at Geldestone , and still looking at Omar byan open window, which gives over a greener landscape than yours .

H is letters to Cowell at this period large ly partake of the

nature of journals . On July 13th , 1857, he writes :By to morrow i shall have finished my first Physiognomy of

Omar, whom i decided ly prefer to any Persian i have yet seen,unless perhaps Saliman .

Tuesday,July tails—Here is the anniversary of our Adieu at

Rushmore. And i ha ve been (rather hastily) ge tting to an end of

my first survey of the Calcutta Omar by way of counterpart to our

joint survey of the Ouseley MS . then (on the 14th July) . I mus trepeat . i am sure this Calcutta Omar is. in the same proportionwith the Ouseley. by as good a hand as the Ouseley; by as good ahand , if not Omar’

s ; which i think you seemed to doubt if it wasin one of your letters .

Have 1 previously asked you to observe 486 ? ofwhich i senda poor Sir W . Jones ’

sort of Parody. which came into my mindwalking in the garden here , where th e rose is blowing as in Pers ia .

And with this poor little envoy my letter shall end. i will not stopto make the verse better.

I long iorwine l oh Siki ofmy soul .

Prepare thy song and fill the morning bowl .

For this first summermonth that brings the rose ,

Takes many a Sulta n with it as it goes .‘

r. l do not know that George Borrow ever puhliahed anytransiations irom-6 . H e printed privately

l so cOplee of a literal translation ot theJokes of the Khwaja Nasr ed mn B iendl.under the titie °‘The Turkieh Jeeter. or the Pieaa nuies oi Cogia Naar ed din

B i endi. tn naiated irom the‘

l‘urkish by 0eorge Borrow.

"Ipswich. 1884 .

a. Suggested by ruba‘

iyat wh ich are Noa. 1 18 and 135 in the BodleianMS . The Calcutta M8 . contains ruba‘iyat much closer to E . F . O .

’

s verse.

which became No 8 in Fitzgerald'

s first edition. F . v . 9.

I ntroduch'

on xxiii

During the summerand autumn of 1857, FitzOeraldwouldappear to have finished the first draft ofh is translation, and in

a le tter, written to Cowell on the 8th December, 1857, he says :

3.

I have left with Borrow the copy of th e Mantis De Tassy gaveme : so some days ago i bought ano thercop y of Nor-gate . For you

must know I had again taken up my rough sketch of a translationwhich, such as it is , might easily be finished . But it is in truth notranslation , but only th e paraphrase of a syllabus of the poem ; ‘quite un like the original in style , too . But it would give , I think,a fair proportionate accoun t of th e scheme of th e poem . I f ever Ifinish it, i will send it you . Well, then , in turning this over, I alsoturned over volume i . of Sprenger's Catalogue ,’ which I boughtby itselffor 6s . a year ago . As it contains all the Persian MSS. ,

I supposed that would be enough for me . I have been looking athis list of Attar's Poem s . What a number ! All, almost , muchmade up ofApologues, in which Attar exce ls , I think . H is storiesare be tter thanJami's ; ‘

to be sure , h e gives more to pick out of.

An interesting thing in th e Mantis is th e stories about Mahmud ,and th ese are the be st in the book. I find I have got seven or

eight in my brie f extrac t . I see Sprenger says Attar was born in513, four years before poor Omar Khayyam died ! He mentionsone ofAttar's books , “The Book of Union,”Wasiat namah,whichseems to be on th e very subject of the Apologuc to th e Peacock

'

s

Brag in th e Mantis , line 8 14 in De Tassy. I suppose this is nomore th e orthodox Mussulman version than it is ours . Sprengeralso men tions as one separate boo k wha t is part of th e Mantis ,

and main part, the Haftwady. Sprenger says (p . 350) how th e

MSS. of Attar difi'

er from one another.

And now about old Omar. You talked of sending a paperabout him to Fraser, and I told you , if you did, i would s top it tillI had made my comments . I sup pow you have not had time todo what you proposed ; or are you overcome with the flood ofbadLatin I poured upon you ? We ll , don't be surprised (vexed youwon

't be) if I so licit Fraser for room for a few quatrains inEnglish verse , however, with only such an introduction as you

and Sprenger give me—very short—os as to leave you to say all

that is scho larly, if you will . I hope this is not very cavalier ofme . But , in truth , I take old Omar rathermore as my propertythan yours ; h e and I are more akin , are we not ? You see all

[his] Beauty, bu t you don ’t fee l with him in some respects as I do .

I think you would almost fee l obliged to leave out th e part of

This is as terse a deacription as could weil he given of his poem .

the Ruba ’iyat of Omar.

a. Vida post , Bibliographical References (p. sub 5.

xxiv I ntroduction

Hamlet iu mpren ndng him to your audience for fear of mischief.

Now l do uot wtsh to ehow iiamlet at his maddest ; but mad he

muet be ehownmr he is no ilu nlet at all. G . de Tassy eluded all

that wu dangu oumand all that was ch aracteristic . I thiukth eee

tree optnious are less dangerous in an old Mahometan or an old

Roman (like Lucre tius ) than when they are re turned to by those

who have lived on happier fiood . I don'

t know what you will sayto ell thte. However. I dare u y it won

’t ma tterwhe ther l do the

l muct . however, while l thinkot it , again notice to you about

thou firet lutroduc toryQuatraine tc Omar in both the copies youhaw m m uken out ot theu d phabefical place if they be Omar

'

s

owu . evideutly by way ot putting a good leg foremcst—or perhap s

no t hie at all. So that which Sprenger says begins the Oude MS .

la, maniiu tly. not auyApology ot'

Omar’

s own , but a Denunc iationot him by oomecue elee ; and is a sort of parody (in iorm at least )oi Omar

'

s owu quatrain 445,’ with its indiguant replybythe Sultan.’

In january he sent the manuscript to his publisher, andlater again to Parker, and on the3rd September, 1858, he saysto Cowell :

l have not turued tc l’ersian sincc the spring. but shall oue

day look back to it. and renew my attack on th e Seven Cas tles,"it that he the name .

‘ I found th eJami MS. at Rushmere ; andthere lefllt tor the present , as the oth er poem will be enough tor

uto tor tuy tirst cuslaugh t . I believe l will do a lit tle a day, so as

not to loco what little knowledge I had . As to my Omar, I gaveit to Parker in january, I think ; he saying Fraser was agreeableto take it . Si nce then I have heard no more ; so as, I suppose ,they don‘t care about it ; and may be quite right . Had I thoughtthat they would be so long. however, I would have copied it outaud eout it to you ; and I will still do so from a rough and impertect

copy I have (though not now at hand), in case they show no signsoi prtuttug mo. Mytranels tiou will interwt you fi'

om its formmnd

also ln many m pects tn its detail, very unliteral as it is . Manyquatretne are mashed toge ther and something lost, I doubt , of

Otw‘c dmpltoity, whlch is so much a virtue in him.

‘ But there

t . Thh w dd p M u wmm dy be m was reaIin d.

e la tho Calctttta HS

3. M m tho two qm ul ins Noa 316 m d3r7 ot Nicolas‘s text.

q. Th w m lu ol Bahu m Gur alluded to by FitzGeraId in his note“M a t t hews M m mede the m bject cf a weu-known poetim l rom nce,

th flm h lh rol l‘ih l n h whtch is the workafluded to in the ahove let ter.

3. M M V ritmg to m under date y st Decembes ga says

W ho abb to dcd do whether hh firs t translatioo m made tmm the

whether thet will aocount ior all the tetn stiche .

M M M N t he neve r. l h ney. inve e ted an entire tetm tich oi

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xxvi I ntroduction

I sent yeu pooroid Omar. who hs s his ldud ot eensolation tor

sli these thinp . l donbt you will regret you ever introduced him

to me . And ye t you would have me print th e ofiginah with manyworse thtngs than l have translated. The Bird Epic migh t be

finishcd at onceflbut w i bono ? No one cares tor such things .

and there are doubtless sc many better things to care about . Ihardly know why I print any of these things , which nobody buys ;and l soarce now see the tew l give them to. But when one has

done one'

s beet , and ls sure that that best ts better than so manywill take palns to do , though t

’

ar from the bect that migh t be done ,one llkes to make an end of th e matter by print . I suppose verytew peop le have ever taken such pains in translation as I have,though certainly no t to be literal. But at all cost , a thing must

origina ls better. Better 9. live sparrow th an a stufi'

ed eagle . I shall

be verywell p leased to see the new MS. ot'

Omar.

lie evidently did not look upon this as the last wordto be said on the subject of Omar, for on the 7th December,1861 , we find him writ ing to Cowell

l shall lookdtrectly ior the ps ssage s in Omar and Hifizwhich

you reter to and clear up , though l scarce ever see the Persian

charac ter now. ( suppose you would think it a dangerous thingto edlt Omar ; else . who so proper ? Nay, are you not the onlyman to do lt ? And he certainly is worth good re -editing. I

thought hlm trom the first the most remarkable ct‘

th e Persian

poetmm d you keep findtng out in hhn evidences ot lcgical fancy

t . Thts wu never pdntod in Pit rGerald'

r liietime . I t oocup iu pp qn

m-w m m xm b m mm m m m s us tm mb t Newton ot liu -ttord. In 1857 . Gard n de Tu sy puhtished his fi fion

et tho rsten texu ot whieh he had previousiygiven an nnflyt is in his ‘La

Pe t sh phfloeophtque a rd tgh m cher h s'

; m d fi teGq -fld at onoe

thu w htmselt into the study ot tt with ell his chfi ac tM c enthusis sm .

De M u hn qm fly puM in rwg a Pm eh pru e tn nflafion

h u estu iq the difi calties of the m He ottm wro te to me in

I ntroduction xxvi i

which I had not dreamed of. I dare say these logical riddles are

no t his best , bu t they are yet evidences of a strength of m indwhich our Persian friends rare ly exhibit , I think . I always saidabout Cowley, Donne , etc . , whom Johnson calls the metaphysicalpoets, that their very quibbles of fancy showed a power of logicwhich could fo llow fancy through such remote analogies . This isthe case with Calderon'

s conceits also ) I doubt I have givenbut a very one -sided version of Omar; but what I do only comesup as a bubble to the surface and breaks ; whereas you, withexact scholarship, might make a las ting impression of such an

And writ ing to Prof. W . H . Thompson, who subsequentlybecame Master of Trin ity, he says :

As to my own peccadilloes in verse , which never pretend tobe origina l, this is th e story of Rubaiyat . I have trans la ted thempartly for Cowe ll ; young Parker asked me some years ago for

some thing for Fraser, and I gave him th e less wicked of theseto use if he chose . He kept them for two years without us ing ;and as I saw h e didn ’t want them I printed some copies withQuarltch ; and , keeping some for myse lf, gave him th e rest.Cowe ll, to whom I sent a copy, was naturally alarmed at it ;he be ing a very religious man ; nor have I given any o ther cop ybut to George Borrow, to whom I had once lent the Persian ,

and to old Donne when he was down here the o ther day, towhom I was showing a passage in ano ther book which broughtmy old Omar up .

Omar drops out of his correspondence from this po in tuntil the a8th December, 1867, when he writes to Cowell :

I don't think I told you about Garcin de Tassy . He sen tme (as no doubt he sen t you) his annual Oration .

’ I wrote tothank him ; and said I had been late ly busy with another countryman of his , Mons . N icolas , with his Omar Khayyam . On whichDe Tassy writes back by return of post to ask“Where I gotmy copy of N icolas ? He had not been able to get one in all

Paris ! ” So I wrote toQuaritch , who told me th e book was tobe had of Maisonneuve , or any Oriental bookseller in Paris ; but

1 . FitzGerald‘

s first trans lations from Calderon were published in 1853,under the title “Six Dramas from Calderon .

"Theywere hadly received by the

Press ; the Aut u mn, in part icular. at taclred the work so vic lently that he withdrew them from circulationmnd destroyed the who le edition. They are reprinted

h a m in vd ii of tt A tters and Uterary Remains.”

a. As Pro fessor ofOriental Languages in the Institut de France . There isa Recueil Factice of these in the British M useum contfining his annual orationsfrom 1853to 1869.

I ntroductio n

that probably the shopman did not understand when “LesRubaiyat d '

Omar,"etc . , were asked fior, that it meant “Les

Quatrains , etc . This (which I doubt not is the solution of the

mys tery) I wrote to Garcin , at th e same time ofiering one of mytwo cop ies . By return of post comes a frank acceptance of one

of the copies , and his own translation of Attar's Birds by wayof equivalent . At p . 256, Trans lation (v . I read ,“Lorsque NizAm ui-Mulk fut a l’agonie, ii dit : ‘0 mon Dion ! ism

’

en vais entre les mains du Here is our Omar in hisfriend ’

s mouth, is it not ? ‘

I n September, 1863, Mr. Ruskin addressed a letter toThe Translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar,

” which be en

trusted to Mrs . Burne jones , who, after an interval of nearlyten years , handed it to Charles Eliot Norton , Professor of

the History of Fine Art in Harvard Un ivers ity .

“By himit was transm itted to Carlyle , who sent it to FitzGerald, withthe le tter which follows, of which the s ignature alone is in

h is own handwriting :Cau se s , 14th April , 1873.

Dean Firs aALo ,—Mr. Norton , the writ er of that note , is

a distinguished American (co -Editor for a long time of the North

American Review), an extremely amiable, inte lligent and worthyman, with whom I had some pleasant wa lks, dialogues and o thercommunications of late months , in th e course ofwhich he broughtto my knowledge , for the first time , your notable Omar Khayyam ,

and insisted on giving me a copy from th e th ird edition , which Inow possess, and duly pris e . From him , too , by careful crossques tioning, I iden tified beyond dispute th e hidden FitzGerald .

"

th e translator ; and, indeed , found that his complete silence and

unique modesty in regard to said meritorious and successtul per

formance was s imply a feature of my own Edward F. l The

translation is exce llent ; the book itself a kind of a jewe l in its way.

I do Norton ’s mission without the least delay, as you pew eive .

Ruskin ’

s message to you passes through my hands sea led. I am

T . Can vas .

At the same time Carlyle wrote to Pro f. Norton :5Canvas Row, Cas ass a,

i sth April, 1873.Dan Non‘

ros ,—I t is poseible FitzGerald may have writtw to

you ; but wheth er or not, I will send you his letter to myself, as a

1 . Vida note a to Ruha‘

i No. xex, feeta. Vr

‘

dz the Bibliography, No. 7 1 .

1m m xxix

slight emblem and memorial of the peaceable , afieotlonate , and

noetico (were there nothing more) of Omar, the MahometanBlackguard, and Oliver Cromwell, the English Puritan. diecharging you completely, at the same time, from ever returningme this letter, or taking anynctice ofit, ercep t a small ellent one .

The following was enclosed :1504 4 , 1673.

Mr c an Gu erra—Thank you for enclosing r. Norton'sletter, aad will you thankhim for his eocloeure ot lltr. tiuekin’n

I t is lncky for both R. and me thet you did not read hle note ; a

sudden fit of fancy, l euppoae . Which he ie eubiect to . But ae lt

was kindlymeant on hie psrt Jhave written to thankhlm. Ratheriate in the day, for hie b tter (which Mr. Norton thinks mayhe ve

iahra year or two in his friend’s deekfls dated Septemberu Bbsn n

P. S.- Perhap e l had better write a wcrd of thauke to

l ta Nortoa which I will dc . I suppoee he may be

M at the addnees he giyee.

a ch tnouhle as you have in the

m u m m m m l w l m y as wefltln nk

”s harp en ! very to gather fmm yn r oet e thnt

13! March, 1881 .

Mr De an Sl R,—I must thank you sincerely for your thoughtsabout Salaman , in which l recognise a good will towards the

Trans lator as well as liking for his work .Of course , your praise could no t but help that on ; but I scarce

think that it is of a kind to profit so far by any review as to makeit worth th e expense of time and talent you might bestow upon it .I n Omar’

s case it was different ; he sang in an acceptable way, itseems , of what all men feel in their hearts , but had not had

exprest in verse before . Jam i tells of wha t everybody knows ,under cover of a not very skilful allegory. I have undoubtedlyimproved th e whole by boiling it down to about a quarter of itsoriginal size , and there are many pretty things in it, though theb lank verse is too M iltonic for Oriental style .

All this cons idered, whydid I overmeddle with it ? Why, it wasth e first Persian poem I read , with my friend Edward Cowell, nearon fortyyears ago ; and I was so we ll p leased with it then (and nowthinkit almost th e bcst ofth e Pers ian poems I have read or heardabout), that I published my vers ion of it in 1856 (I think) withParker, of th e Strand . When Parker disappeared , my unso ldcopies , many more than of th e sold , were returned to me ; some ot

which, ifnot all, I gave to littleQuaritch , who , I be lieve, trumpetedthem 05to some little profit, and I thought no more of them )

But some six or sev en years ago that Sheikh of m ine , 81 dCowe ll , who liked th e version be tter than anyone e lse, wished itto be rep rinted . So I took it in band, boiled it down to three

fourths of what it originally was , and (as you see) c lapt it on the

back of Omar, where I still be lieved it would hang somewhat of adead we ight ; but that wasQuaritch ’

s look out , not mine . I havenever heard of any notice taken of it, but just now from you ; andI be lieve that , say wha t you would, people would rather have th eold sinner alone . Therefore it is that l write all this to you. Idoubt not that any of your editors would accept an article fromyou on the subject , but I be lie ve a lso they wou ld much pre fer oneon many ano ther subject ; and so probably with the public whomyou write for.

Thus “liberavi animam meam" for your behoot, as I am

righ tly bound to do in retum for your goodwill to me .

As to the publication of my name , l believe l could well

dispenae with it , were it other and better than it is . But I havesome unp leasant associations with it ; not th e least of them beingthat it was borne , Christian and surname , by a man who left

oc llege just whea ent th ere H H What has become of him

I know not ; but he , among other causes , has made me disiike

my name m d made me sign myeelf M in fun, of course) to

my fiienda as now l do to yom sincerely yours .

(T he Laird of) L in nae u s o s ,

where I date from .

1 . I t is strange that Fitzc erald makes no allusion here to the reprint ofthe first edition made by Cowell and Sons , op swich , in 187 1 .

I ntroduction xxxi

The FitzGerald referred to in this letter was EdwardM arlborough FitzGerald, who , I am informed, achieved some

notoriety in unenviable directions. To this correspondencewith Mr. Schutz Wilson the year before his death he refers intwo of his letters to Fanny Romble l in th e terms following :

Fobs-nary, 1882 .

Mr. Schfitz Wilson , a mem e" en gésérs l . I be lieve , wroteup Omar Khayyam some years ago , and I dare say somewhathastened another (and so far as I am concerned) final edition .

March, 1882.

Not content with having formerly apprab cd that Omar ina way that , I dare say, advanced h im to another edition , he

(S. W .) now writes me that he fee ls moved to write in favourof another Persian wh o now accompanies Omar in h is las tAvatar. I have to ld him plainly that he had bet ter not employtime and talent on what I do no t think he will ever persuadethe public to care about, but he thinks he will . H e may verylike ly coo l upon it ; but in th e meanwhile such are his goodintentions , not on ly to the little poem . but , I be lie ve , to myselfalso—personally unknown as we are to one another.

Such is the history, as recorded by its author, of the

Poem which of la te years has become in a manner the

gospel of a cult .

So many em inent scholars , poe ts and essayists have givento the world critical essays and appreciations , having for the irtheme th is poem of Edward FitzGerald ’

s, that were I to add

a further discourse on the subject I should be adding an itemof little or no value to the mass of analytical criticism . One

aspect of th e poem I may, however, be allowed to consider,on the ground that I have an int imate acquaintance with theoriginal in general and with FitzGerald ’

s sources of inspirationin particular ; and that is its claim to cons ideration as a

translation .

’ A translat ion pure and s imple it is not, but a

translation in the most artistic sense of the term it undoubtedlyis . I n cons idering this quest ion i t is necessary to bear in m ind

1 .

“Let terof Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble , 1871 - 1883, edited byWilliam Aldis Wright. London (Bentley), 1 895.

2 . My researches upon this subject are embodied in the Terminal Essayto this edition, p . 288 .

xxxi i I ntroduction

the first and the second editions of the poem , for these werewri tten under the direct inspiration of the original Pers ian .

‘

The first edition was writt en from the Bodle ian MS. and

the transcript of the Calcutta MS . ; the second—but itwill profit us to read FitzGerald

'

s own words from the

preface to the second ( 1868) edit ion :“While the present

edition of Omar was preparing, Mons . Nicolas , FrenchConsul at Resch t , published a very careful and a very goodedition of the text, from a lithograph copy at Teheran,compris ing 464 ruba ’ iyat , with tran slation and no tes of his

own . M ons . Nicolas’

s edit ion has rem inded m e of severalthings , and instructed m e in others . I n this secondedi tion FitzGerald expanded his original seventy-five quatra insto one hundred and ten, nine ofwh ich were suppressed in th e

th ird and subsequent editions . The me thod of const ructionadopted by FitzGerald m us t be borne in m ind . I assumed at onetime that he had made a more or less literal prose translat ion ofhis originals, and, after steeping himself in these ,wrote his poem ;and I suggested this theory to Pro fessor Cowell . H e writes me

under date 8th july, 1 897 :“

I am qu ite sure that Mr. Fitz .

Gerald did not make a literal pro se vers ion first ; he was toofond of gett ing the strong, vivid impress ion of the original asa whole . H e pondered this over and over afterwards, and

1 . Dr. Talcott Williams . the eminent Arabic scholar, writing to M r.

Nathan H. Do le (vol. i. of N . H. Dole '

s edition, p. observes : “I nmy judgment Omar owes more to Fits than he does to himself, as far asEnglish readers are concerned. I do not mean by this that Omar’

s thoughtdiffers with the utterances ofFitzGerald

‘

s trans lation, but the utterance owes so

much in c ur language to th e form in which FitzGerald lu s cast it, that I have

always fel t , in the few quatrains which I have laboriously translated, that pre ttymu ch everything had evaporated when the thought was taken out ofFitzGerald

'

s

setting. The truth im in hm a ure form is everything. Everybody has the

n me ideas , I fancy, and it is only the capacity for expression which makes

exaggerate the difi‘erence be tween native and

European knowledge of an orien tal language . We generallyknow their formalgrammar, history and derivative s of their tongues especially, a hundredfoldbet ter than they do ; bu t wh en it comes to the meaning of a particular passage ,

we are simply nowhere. It is a eimple and soul-humbling truth that the firsttranslation or two of almost anyOriental workis full of the wildest shot. " The

student who undertakes the translation of any Persian author speedily realises

that no t to Sa ’

adi alone might be applied the well-known Eastern saying. Eachword ofSa’

adi has se venty- two meanings .

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that his first transla tion was compiled from the Oxford and

Calcutta MSS. combined . You will find tetrastichs from the

latter reprw ented in his transla tion which have no paralle l in thebrief Oxford MS . I have no M S. c0py of his translation.

That was all done after l had left England . He used to send me

questions by letter.

I des ire to record in this place my profound gratitude toProfessor Cowell for all this most interest ing information,which he alone is competent to give ex cathedrd. To return ,

in the light of these extracts, to the question of how far

Edward FitzGerald m ay be called the translator oftheQuatrainsof Omar Khayyam , Pro fessor Charles Eliot Norton, in the

North American R eview (October, says : H e is to be

called ‘translator only in default of a be tter word, one whichshould express the poet ic transfusion of a poe tic spirit fromone language to another, and the re -representation of th e

ideas and images of the original in a form no t altogetherdiverse from the ir own , but perfectly

'

adapt ed to the new

conditions of tim e , place , cus tom , and habit of m ind in whichthey reappear. I t has all the m erit of a rem arkable originalproduction , and its exce llence is the highest test imony thatco uld be given to the essential impress iveness and worth of

the Persian poet . I t is the work of a poet inspired by thework of a poet ; not a copy, but a reproduc tion ; not a translation , but the re -del ivery of a poe t ic insp iration in its

English dress it reads like the latest and freshest express ionof the perplexity and of the doubt of the genm'

ation to whichwe ourselves belong.

”

debate, if I may so call it , is sup

in an artic le wri tten forM acmillan'

s

Rev iewing FitzGerald '

s paraphrase ,he says : “This unique and beautiful poem does not in truthshow the real Khayyam . Unques tionably among the fine

things in modern Enghsh verse these quatrains give no

accurate represen tation of the original in any of the ir vers ionsas indeed the variations of success ive editions do themse lves

I ntroduction xxxv

tend to show . I n FitzGerald of the fiigh ty Pers ianfreethinker, eclectic and unsystem atic, we see little or

nothing. The want of system here described as lackingin FitzGerald

’

s poem is explained for the orientalist by theexigencies of the diwan form in which Omar

'

s quatra ins havefor the most part been preserved and published . I t is beyond thefunction ofcriticism from the standpo int ofaccurate rendering tobrand FitzGerald ’

s compulsory m arshalling and re organ isationof h is material with the st igma of inaccuracy . Afier presentingus with some renderings of the original into English verserenderings , by-t he -way, far above the average of such achievements , bo th as to m anner and translation—Mr. Keene saysI t is difficult to explain by isolated specimens FitzGerald’

s

devia tions from h is original, because h is variat ion is generaland total. The difference betw een him and Khayyam is the

sam e as that be tween a group oi epigram s and a long sa tire .

"

The essayist then illus trates by quo ting two out of the four

quatrains (F. v . 78 in which FitzGerald has summ ed upthe philo sophy of the whole poem , and appends a literal prosetranslation of two out of the twenty or th irty qua tra ins of

the original that contain the inspirat ion of those four

verses . I t is unfa ir to make this juxtapos ition and to im plythat FitzGera ld intended his two verses as translat ions of thetwo originals given . During the twelve years that I havebeen working at the subject , it has interested me to notewherever I found a line in the Bodleian or in the Calcutta MSS .

that could be distinctly po inted ou t as the original of a

line ofFitzGerald . A veryfew em endat ions were taken by him ,

as he him se lf says , for his second and subsequen t editions ,from the text of Nico las , and at som e future time I proposeto print an edit ion of FitzGerald

’

s quatrains , giving the

original, or inspiration , of every quatrain , if not 01 everyindividual line . The reader of the following pages will beable to judge for him self how close to the originals wholequatra ins ofFitzGerald ’

s poem really are .

xxxv i I ntroduction

Whils t these pnges have be en pe ssing through the press lhave heen folloan

’

ng np the clne afiorded by Profes sor Cowell’

s

xix . ) as to the origin of thedis t ich beginning

“Earth oould no t answer, nor the sens that

mo urn,

"and FitzGera ld

’

s own quo tation of the dying utterances of Niaam ul Mull: from the Man tik ut ta ir of Ferid

ud din At ti r, and I have mad e the discovery that most , if not

all of FitzGerald’

s lines which have bamed students of the

ruba‘iyat of Omar Khayyam , are taken from that poem , whichFitsGerald had deeplystndied immediately be fore he addressedhimself to hiB Omar. (Vidc no te x, p . xxvi .) These parallels

l propoee to set forth in another place ;‘ for the present,sufi ce it to say that I have found in th e M antik ut tairtho originals of the qua tra in beginning

“Oh Thou ! who man

of hm earth didst make ,"and that beginning, “Heaven but

the Vis ion of fulfilled desire ," and many other quatra ins and

isolated lines . A number of these parallels are indicated inthe notes accompanying the text (m

‘

de post) .The faults, if faults they be , which Mr. Keene attributes

to FitzGerald, are necessarily inseparable from any verse translation, the exigencies of rhyme and metre compelling a distortion of the translated lines . These faults are abundantlyman ifest in the verse translations of Mr. Keene him self. Mr.

Whinfield has observed Omar is a poet who can hardly betranslated satisfactorily otherwise than in verse . The

successor of a translator like Mr. FitzGerald, who ventures towrite verse , and especially verse of the metre which he hashandled with such success , canno t help feeling at almost everystep that he is provoking comparisons very much to his owndisadvantage . But I do no t think this considerat ion ought todeter him from using the vehicle which everything else indicates as the proper one .

” Even admitting th is con tent ion,

one cannot help regretting that Mr. Whinfield did not also

give us the literal prose translation he may be assumed tohave made in the first instance ; a comparison of the literal

x. Via the’

rerminal Em y to this edition. p. 388 .

I ntroduction

trans lat ions comprised in the pres ent vo lume w ith his verserenderings of the same quatrains , w ill, I think , abundantlyj us tify this regret , from the po int of view of the m ere st udent .I t is next door to imposs ible to im i tate in English the prevailing me tre of the ruba ’ iyat : Mr. M ichae l Kerney, the anonymo useditor of the American reprint of FitzGerald ’

s collected works

(Boston, has attempted it in his no tes to the quatrains,with a res ult which must be seen to be believed . One

enthusiastic student of th e ruba ’ iyat , however, has handledthe metre of the original with grace and felici ty, and that isMr. Nathan H . Dole , editor of the Bost on Variorum Editionof 1896, in his own introductory these containthe true lilt of the original without resorting to verbd quirkstha t jar upon the occidental ear. Ofverse translations, the bes tI have see n are those of Professor C . J . Pickering, in the

National Review for December,

A few words in conclusion, by way of apology for myown work . I t does not aim at be ing an edition of the

Ruba ’ iyat of Omar Khayyam in general , but it is an attemptto place be fore English readers a literal translation of the oldes tknown MS . of the quatrains, and an expos ition of the mos timportant section of the material used by FitzGerald in the

I ndenta tion

L'

l'

he MS. No . t 458 in the Bengal Asiatic Socic ty'

s

Ubrary at Calcutta . I t is a rzmo containing lgg leaves . I t

has g mba’

iya t on each b afi and h fnrther rnba’

iyat are

written upon the margins. Page b of leaf x contains a prose

pmface ending with the anecdoee om ar’

s apparition to his

mother. which leads to the 0p ening rnba’

i of the l l5. quo ted in

the note to q . x, [nsL

m The Bankip ur MS . deecribed at p . xi.

L The Lucknow lithographed edition. My copy, referred

to as L in the notes to this text one of the edition ot w .

131 2 (an) . conta in ing 770 quatra ins .

3. The tu t printed opp osite to his prose translation by

m

Teheran in A3. l 278 (A4 ) .

4. The text lithographed in St . Peta sbnrg in 188& taken

fi'

om the Tah -iz edition ow s M xBoS) . I t is identical

ruba’ i (No . 48) not in Nicolas u d does no t contain the Nosd s,

190,3r6. the concluding five ruha’

iyat,

which ane out of their diwi n order at the end of that text .

5. The Paris MS. before referred to , contain ing 346

6. The Bombay lithographed edit ion of a.n. xzqq tmn .

7. m m m eed byw .m msa¢ dm w m

x. Dn Riea fi Cntalq no d th B-fl m h th w mM M M ‘

a M t t r t TM a h

W a n d a-Paris fi d u w M I M M -fle

h u m m m fi h u m m m b h m .

m m m - . u m m u u m m m m »u u

h u m a ns -gn a w My enpym m m byM M d by M . and ennt

m m mm w m m m m u u h n u au -m nh n

h u m m m h fi om y d m w “b la h -hid :

XW M M Us -fih thh d th m m - a a n—d u mM m h m m a -i h h n h - “t i -y“m th m M M M M o b-n h m d m

I have also consulted, for the elucidation of obscurereadings, but have not collated all through , or given crossreferences to , the following :

8 . The MS . in the Brit ish Museum , Or. 330 .

9. The M S. in the British Muse um , Add .

10 . The Calcut ta li thographed edit ion of 1836 .

1 1 . A collection of ruba'iyat by Omar Khayyam , Babs

Tahir, and Attar, li thographed at Teheran in 1857 .

1 2 . The 4 1 quatra ins contained in the Atash Kadah of

Azr. described elsewhere (p . xii i . and note13. The Paris MS . of 920

14 . The Paris MS . of 937 (A .D .

l have also no ted , where necessary, the translations of

Nicolas , Wh infield, Cowell, and Garcin de Tassy .

I t will there fore be observed that when it would appearfrom the notes to my text that a ruba

’ i is only to be found in theBodle ian MS it m ust be borne in m ind that I have actual ly

searched for it only am ong the ruba'iyat comprised in thefirst e ight of the texts above referred to .

The exigences of tim e , space , my reader’

s patience , and

my publisher’

s pocket have made m e , with som e regre t I own ,

but , I think, with advantage to my book, om it a vast m assof references t o other ruba'iyat , no t identical with , but moreor less close ly corresponding to , ruba

’iyat that are containedin this M S . The inclus ion of these would have swelled myno tes far beyond the dimens ions of the whole work as it stands .

The curious who care to see what they have been sparedm ay m ake the following compariso ns be tween this text andthat of M ons . N icolas alone. They are picked at randomfrom several hundred re ferences

Compare Bodle ian M S . q . 21 with Nicolas 's text, q . 1 17

29 I 77

34 I 68-

9

xl [W W W

Com pare Bodle ian MS . q . 85with Nicolas’

a text , q . 191

1 16 1 15

1 27 64

1 29 72

139 61

I n like manner, when referring to parallel passages fromo ther authors , I have only given the originals (in the Pers iannotes) in the cases where there exist prin ted or lithographedtexts available for reference and eas ily obtainable . I t seem s

a grievous thing to refer the student to an isolated MS . in

the Brit ish Museum or elsewhere , and I have avo ided do ingso , but it may be observed that my quo tations from the

Beharistan are taken from the British M useum MSS Add .

and I do not think that the most exactingcrit ic will blame m e for transpos ing the order of the pagesof the original MS . to have arranged them to read backwards ,according to oriental custom , would have savoured ofpedan try .

Mo st trans lators of oriental works have given elaborateexplanations of the system they have adopted in transl iteratingPers ian words . I t is pitiable that no universal system has

been established, for the diversities to be found in all transliterations are confusing in the extreme . One finds this evenin the name Khayyam , which will be found transliterated inthe Bibliography (p . 281 ) Khaiam , Khai

’

yam , Chiam , Chajjam ,

et c . , etc . I have adopted the expedient of noting only s trongvowe l so unds represented in the original by Ali], Wow, and

Ye, giving always a supplem entary note of the actual Pers ianwhere I have been compelled to transliterate . EdwardFitzGerald crys tallized (so to speak) for all time the transliteration ruba ’ iyat,

”a transliteration which I would fain

see fall into disuse and thence into oblivion . The wordruba ’ i is common to more than one oriental language , and

is correctly translated “quatrain .

” Between the letters of

the firs t part of the word “t uba " and the term inal -i, or -y,

occurs the purely oriental le tter a soft gh, as in our word

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xiii I ntroduction

Mr. Barry Pain, who has gone through it with me and helpedme to turn the intricate Pers ian construction of the lines intoEnglish, a task for which one is entirely unfitted after be ingsteeped , as I had been during the preparation of th is volum e

for the press , in the involved phras ing of the original. The

arrangemen t of the quatra ins upon the pages of the MS . ,

a bait , a ruba’ i, and another ba it on each, be ing very awk

ward for the English reader. and the translation be ing muchconfused by note -references , I have inserted be tween this I ntroduction and the text accompanied by the transla tion and

the facsim iles , e tc . , a clean copy of the English only, for theconvenience of readers who wish to gather a general impression of the whole poem , without go ing into the m inutia dealtwith in the notes . I t must , however, be borne in m ind bythose who read this English transla tion, that the nature of

the original is such that in many places it is quite incomprehensible without reference to the notes which accompanythe text . I n conclusion, I canno t do bet ter than quote theconcluding distich of the edition from which the Kama ShastraSociety's translat ion of the G ulis tan was made

Gratitude is due that this book is endedBefore my life has reached its termination.

‘

LONDON, April, 1898 .

1 . The originnla of thene lim will be found on p . as7. They are taben

from n text of the Gulis tin lithogn phed in Bombny in 1875. The Editor remarks .

in a mu g ind nme that he hn never seen thw mm y M S other than ttn t from

which his te xt m taken .“M r. EHia consulted a qum fity of M SS and texts

of the Gulis tl n at the British M usenm before he iound them forme in the 1875lithograph.

ENGL ISH TRANSLAT ION

drinkwine in the moonfight. O Moon , fnr the moon

6.

The Qnr an , which men cnll the Snpreme Word,

which they reud at all times and in all riacee.

7 .

Here are we ; and so is the wine, and the drinking bench

and the rnined furnac e ;

careless of hopes of mu cy, and of fears of pnnishment

our souls , and our hearts , and our goblets , and onr garments

full of the lees of wine ,

independent of earth and air, and fire and water.

8.

In this life it is best that thou shouldst mahe but few

when thou examinest him closely, he is thine enemy.

9.

This jug was once a p laintive lover as l am ,

th is handle that thou seest upon its neckis an arm that once lay around the neck of a friend .

I O.

Ab , woe to that heart in which there is no passion ,

which is not spell-bound by the love of a heart -cheercr l

there is no day more useles s to thee than that day.

English Translation 3

n .

To -day be ing the season of my yo uth ,I des ire wine , for thence comes my happiness ;reproach me not , even though acrid it is pleasant ;it is acrid in that it represents my life .

1 2 .

Thou hast no power to-day over the morrow,

and anxiety about the morrow brings th e only melancholy ;wast e not thou this moment if thy heart be not mad,

for the value of the remainder of this life is not manifest .

r3.Now that there is a poss ibility of happiness Got the world,every living heart has yearn ings towards the de sert,upon every bough is the appearance of Mom s

’ hand,in every breeze is the exhalation of Jesus ’ breath .

I 4 . JM f/a /For h im for whom the fruit ot the branch of truth has not grown .

the reason is that he is not firm in the Road .

Every one has feebly shaken with his hand the bough a]truth .

Know that tod ay is like yesterday, and that to-morrow is likethe First Day of Creation.

15.

Already on the Day of Creation beyond the heavens my soul

searched for the Tablet and Pen and for heaven and hell ;at last the Teac her sa id to me wit h His enlightened judgmen t,“Tablet and Pen, and heaven and hell, are within thyself."

16.

Arise and give mc wine—what time is this for words ?

b r to -n ight thy little mouth fills all my needs ;

give me wine , rose -co loured as thy checks ,

(or th is penitence of mine is as full of tangles as thy curls .

1—4

Ruba'

iyat of Omar K hm dm

17 .

The spring breeze blows swee tly upon the face of the rose ,

in the shade of the garden plot a darling’

s face is sweet ;nothing thou canst say of yesterday that is pas t , is sweet,be happy and do no t speak of yes terday, for to-day is sweet .

18.

How long shall I throw bricks upon the surface of the sea ?

I am disgusted with the ido l-wors hippers of the pagoda .

Khayyam ! who can say that he will be a den izen of hell,who ever went to hell. and who ever came from heaven ?

19 M /MThe elements of a cup which he has p ut toge ther,the ir breaking up a drinker cannot approve ,

‘

all these heads and delica te fee t—with his finger-tips ,

for love of whom did he make them —for hate of whomhe break them ?

20 .

Like water in a great river and like wind in the desert ,ano ther day pas ses out of the period of my existence ;grief h as never lingered in my m ind—concerning two days ,the day that has not ye t come and the day that is past .

2 1 .

Seeing that my com ing was not tor m e the Day of Creation ,

and that my undes ired departure hence is a purpose fixed for are,

ge t up and gird well thy lo ins , O nimble Cup-bearer,for I will wash down the misery of the world in wine .

22 .

Khayyim , who stitched at the tents of wisdom ,

fell into the furnace of sen-

row and was suddenly burnt ;the shears of doom cut the tent-rope of his existence ,and the broker of hope sold him for a mere song .

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6 Ruba'ryat of Omar Khayydm

29.

No one can pass behind the curtain that nail: the secret,the m ind of no one is cognizant of what is there ;save in the heart of earth we have no haven .

Drink wine , for to such talk there is no end .

30 . M NThe mystery m ust be kept hidden from all the ignoble ,and the secrets m ust be withheld from fools .

Cons ider thine actions towards My fellow men

our hopes must be concealed from all mankind .

t ax.

From the beginn ing was writ ten what shall be ;unhaltingly the Pen writes, mod is heedless of good and bad ;

on the First Day H e appo inted everything that must beour grief and our efl'

ort s are va in .

32 .

In the spring, on the bank of the river and on the edgeof the field ,

with a few companions and a playmate houri -shaped,bring forth the cup, for those that drink the morning draughtare independent of the . mosque and free from the synagogue

33The heavenly vault is the girdle of my weary body,Jihun is a water-course wo rn by my filtered tears,he ll is a spark fi'

om my useless worries ,

Paradise is a moment of time when l am tranquil.

34‘

They say that the garden of Eden is p leasant with houris

I say that the juice of the grape is pleasnn t.

Hold fast this eash and let that eredit go,

for the noise of drums, brother, is pleasant from alar.

English Translation 7

35Drink wine , for thou wilt sleep long beneath the claywithout an intimate , a friend, a comrade , or wife ;take care that thou tell

’

st not th is hidden secret to anyoneThe tulips that are withered will never bloom aga in .

36.

Drink wine , for this is life eternal ,this is thy gain from the days of thy youtha season of roses , and wine , and drunken companionsbe happy for a moment for Th is is life !

37G ive me wine wh ich is a salve formy wounded heart,it is the boon companion of those who have trafiicked in love ;to my m ind the dregs of a s ingle draught are be tterthan the vault of heaven which is the hollow of the world ’

s

skuu.

38 .

I drink wine , and my enem ies from left and rightsay Do not drink wine , for it is the foe of religion .

When I knew that wine was the foe of religion ,

I said By Allah ! let me drink the foe '

s blood, for tha t

lawful .

39Wine is a melted ruby and the cup is the m ine thereo f ;the cup is a body and it s wine is the soul thereof ;that crystal cup that is bubbling ove r with wineis a tear in which the heart ’s blood is hidden .

40.

I know not whether he who fashioned me

appo inted m e to dwell in heaven or in dreadful he ll,but some food , and an adored one , and wine , upon the green

bank of a heldall these three are cash to me : thine be the credit-heaven !

s m e m e s-”a .

the hapgim n d misevy ttn t ane predeetined for uh

fi m m u m the m b r in the way of wmdomM a h m am a tlmum dfirld m e he lp less than thou

not one ch y of hie life has been wasted

either he scrim to meet with God ’

s approbation,ot he choosee bodily comb rt and raises the wine-cup.

rose or tulip-bed,

M M M W M crimson blood of a king ;

every violet shoot that grows from the earth

ia a mole thut was m upon the cheek of a beauty.

44 .

Be prudenh for the means of life are uneertain“M ior the sword of dest iny is keen .

ll fortune place almond-sweets in thy very mo uth ,beware ! awd low them or poison is mingled therein .

45

Ooo jur of wine and a lover’

s lips on the bank of the

field

tbm have robbed me of cash , and thee of the credit.

W are pledged to heaven or hell,

but who ever weut to hell, aud who ever came from heaven ?

46 .

0 thou. wh0ee oheek is moulded upon the model of the

wlld roee.

whon faoe ia w t in the mould of Chinese idols ,

ywflday thy amorous glanee gave to tbe Shab of Be bo n

the mom d we knlghh the Ca fle t t hog the Pawn,

W thuQueen.

English Translation 9

47

Since life passes ; what is Baghdad and what is Balkh ?When the cup is full, what matter if it be sweet or bitter ?Drink wine , for o ften, after thee and m e , this moonwill pas s on from the last day of t he month to the first, and

from the first to the last .

48 .

Of thos e who draw the pure date wineand those who spend the n ight in prayer,not one is on the dry land , all are in the water.

One is awake : the o thei‘s are asleep .

49

This inte llect that haunts the path of happinesskeeps saying to thee a hundred tim es a day

Understand in this s ingle momen t of thine existence , thatthou art not

like tho se herbs which when they gather them Spring up again .

Those who are the slaves of in te llect anci‘

h‘

ail

splitting,have perished in bickerings about existence and non existence ;

go , tho u ignorant one , and choose rather grape -j uice ,for the ignoran t from eating dry ra is ins have becom e like unripe

51 .

My com ing was of no profit to the heavenly sphere ,and by my departure naught will be added to its beauty

dign ity ;ne i ther from anyone have my two ears heardwhat is th e object of this my com ing and go ing .

52.

We must be efiaced in the way of love ,we m ust be destroyed in the talons of des tiny ;0 swee t-faced Cup -bearer, sit thou no t idle ,give to me water, for dust I must become .

10 Ruba’

iyat of Omar K hayyént

53Now that nothing bu t the mere nam e of our happiness

the only old friend that rema ins is new wine ;withhold no t the merry hand from the wine -cup

to-day that nothing but the cup rem ains within our reach .

54

What the Pen has written never changes ,and grieving only results in deep affliction ;even though , all thy life , thou sufi

'

erest anguish ,not one drop becomes increased beyond what it is .

55

0 heart , for a while seek no t the company of the frail ones ;cease for a while to be engro ssed with the comm erce of love .

Frequent the thresholds of the darvishes

perhaps thou mayest be accepted for awhile by the accepted

56 .

Those who adorn the Heavens for a fra gment of time ,come , and go , and come again as time goes on ;

in the skirt of Heaven , and in the pocket of earth ,are creatures who , while God dies not , will ye t be born .

57 p u f f/“fThose whose beliefs are founded upon hypocrisy,come and draw a distinction be tween the body and the soul ;I w ill put the wine jar on my head , if, when I have done so ,

they place a comb upon my head , as ii I were a cock .

58.

The bodies which people this heavenly vault,puzzled the learned .

Beware les t thou loses t the end of the string of wisdom ,

for cm the controllers themselves become giddy.

English Translation 1 1

59

I am not the man to dread my non -existence ,for that half seem s pleasanter to m e than this halfthis is a life which God has lent me ,I will surrender it when the time of surrender comes .

60 .

This caravan of life passes by mysteriouslymayest thou se ize the mom ent that passes happily !Cup

-bearer, why grieve about the to-morrow of thy patrons ?give us a cup of wine , for the n ight wanes .

61 .

Be ing old , my love for thee led my head into a snare ;

if no t , how comes it that my hand holds the cup of date -wine ?My swee theart has des troyed the pen itence born of reason ,

and th e pass ing seasons have torn the garment that pat iencesewed .

62 .

Although wine has rent my ve il,so long as I have a soul I will not be separated from wine ;I am in perplexity concerning Vintners, for theywhat will they buy that is better than what they sell ?

u M '

s“01 0m m

In the tavern thou canst not perform the Ablation save

wine.and thou sum not purity a tarnished reputat ionbo happy, fur thl| voll of tomm nco of ours

lo w tom that lt canuot bo repairod.

” M M N W M W -h e

M a m m o w m h k“w h fi e u fi fl h fi w fi .

fi“w a m m fi fi m“fl e fik afi t h fi e aw g“l fi a fl m fi fi a.

d fl d fi wfi flfle ‘h -‘e ‘e fi h d q m

p .

0 9 10 1!“W h a m .

fi W h ‘n fi-fltm d q in :

fi h m h u dh - ‘m fl

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14 Rnba’iyat a/ Om r moyyfi n

77 .

Drink wine , tha t will banish thy abundan t woes ,and will banish thought of the Seventyo two Sectsavoid no t the alchem ist , for, from him ,

thou takest one draughh and he banishes a thousand calamitics .

78.

Even though wine is forbidden , for all that it depends upon who

drinks it.and then in what quantity, and also with whom he drinks it ;these three conditions be ing as they should be ; say !

who drinks wine if a wise man does no t do so ?

79

Drink wine , for thy body becomes atom s in the earth ,thine earth, after that , becomes goblet s and jars ;be thou heedless of hell and heaven,why should a wise man be dece ived about such things ?

80 .

Now is the time when by the spring-breezes the worldadorned ,

and in hope of rain it Opens its eyes ,the hands of Moses appear like h'

oth upon the bough ,the breath of jeans comes forth from the earth .

81 .

Every draught that the Cup -bearer scatters upon the earthquenches the fire of anguish in some afflicted eye .

Praise be to God ! thou realizest that wineis a juice that frees thy heart from a hundred pains .

82 .

Every morning the dew bedecks the faces of the tulips ,the cres ts of the violets in the garden are ben t downwardverily, most plea s ing to me is the rosebudwhich gathers its s kirts close around itself.

English Transla tion 15

83.Friends , when ye hold a meet ing together,it behaves ye warm ly to rem ember your friend ;when ye drink wholesom e w ine toge ther,and my turn comes , turn a goblet upside down .

84 .

Friends , when with consent ye make a tryst toge ther,and take delight in one another’

s charms ,

when the Cup-bearer takes round in h is hand the M ugh wine ,remember a certain helpless one in your benediction .

85.

One cup of wine is worth a hundred hearts and religions ,one draught of wine is worth the em pire of China ,saving ruby wine there is not , on the face of earth ,any acrid th ing that is worth a thousand sweet souls .

86 .

If thou des irest H im , be separa ted from wife and children ,

bravely move thine abode from thy re lations and friends ;whatever is, is an hindrance on the road for thee ,how canst thou journey with these hindrances —remove them !

87 .

Bring me that ruby in a c lear glass ,bring me that compan ion and intimate of all excellent peoplesince thou knowest that the duration of this earthly worldis a wind that qu ickly passes by,—bring ma wane .

88.

Arise ! bring phys ic to this oppres sed heart ,bring that musk-scented and rose -coloured wine ;if thou des ire st the elements of sorrow’

s antidote ,bring ruby wine and the s ilk stringed lute .

r6 Ruba'

iyat of Omar Khayyam

89.

l saw a pot ter in the bazaar yesterda ,

he was violently pounding the fresh clay,and that clay sa id to him , in mystic language ,“I was once like thee—so treat me well."

90 .

Drink of that wine that is e ternal li fe ,it is the stock-in-trade of youthful pleasure , drink !it burns like fire , but sorrowsit makes like the water of life—drink !

91 .

Follow not the Traditions, and leave alone the Commands ,withhold not from anyone the morsel that thou possesses t :ne ither slander, nor afflict the heart of anyone ,I guarantee you the world beyond— bring wine !

92.

Wine is rose -red , and the cup is filled with the water roses ,

maybe ,in the crystal casket is a pure ruby,—maybe ,a melted w hy is in the water, —maybe ,moonlight is the veil of the sum—maybe .

93Every vow we make , we break again,

we shut once more upon o urselves the door of

fair repute ;blame me no t if l ac t as a foo l,for once more am I drunken with th e wine of love .

94 .

To speak plain language , and not in parables ,are the pieces and heaven plays the game ,

are played together in a baby-game upon the chessboard

and one by one we return to the box of none xistence .

18 Ruba’

iyat of Omar K hayydm

10 1 .

I will give thee counsel if thou wilt give ear to me ,

for the sake of God do not wear the garment of hypocrisy,the hereafter will fill all hours, and the world is but a moment,do not sell the kingdom of e ternity for the sake of one moment .

1 02 .

Khayyam , if thou art drunk with wine , be happy,if thou reposest with one tulip-checked , be happy,since the end of all things is that thou wilt be naught ;whilst thou art , imagine that thou art not ,

— bc happy

103.I went last night into the workshop of a potter,I saw two thousand pots, some speaking, and some s ilent ;suddenly one of the pots cried out aggress ive lyWhere are the pot maker, and the po t buyer, and the

seller

104 DA N/4Of this spirit, that they call pure wine ,they say I t is a remedy for a ru ined heartset quickly be fore me two or three heavily filled cups ,why do they call a good water wicked water”

?

105.

Regard my virtues one by one , and forgive my crimesby ten,

pardon every crime that is past , the reckon ing is with God !let not the wind and air fan the flame of thy rancour,by M uhammad’

s tomb ! forgive me .

1 06 y e l l/“LVerily wine in the goblet is a delicate spirit,in the body of the jar, a delicate soul reposes ,nothing heavy is worthy to be the friend of winesave the wine-cup, for that is, at the same time , heavy and

English Translation 19

107 .

Where is the lim it to eternity to come , and where to eternitypast ?

now is the time of joy, there is no substitute for wineboth theory and practice have passed beyond my ken,but wine unties the knot of every difficulty .

1 08 .

This vault of heaven , beneath which we stand bewildered ,we know to be a sort of magic-lanternknow thou that the sun is the lamp-flame and the universe is

the lamp,we are like figures that revolve in it .

109.

I do not always prevail over my nature—but what can I do ?and I sufi

'

er for my actions—but what can I do ?I verily believe that Thou wilt generously pardon me

on account of my shame that Thou hast seen what I havedone—but what can I do ?

1 1 0 .

Let me arise and seek pure wine ,make thou the colour of my cheek like tha t of the juj ubeas for this meddling intellect , a fist -full of winewill I throw in its face , to make it sleep .

so Ruba’

éyat of Omar K hayycim

1 13 pn ltklI n loving Thee I incur reproaches for a hundred sins,and if I fail in this obligation I pay a penalty :if my life remain faithful to Thy cruelty,please God , I shall have less than that to bear til! the

mea t Day.

1 14 .

The world being fleeting, I practise naught but artifice ,I hold only with cheerfulness and sparkling w ine ;they say to me May God grant thee peni tence .

He himself does not give it, and if He gives it , I w ill none of it .

1 15.

Although I have come with an air of supplication to the mosque ,by Allah ! I have not come to pray ;I cam e one day and stole a prayer-mat

that sin wears out , and I come again and aga in .

1 16.

When I am abased beneath the foo t of des tinyand am rooted up from the hope of life ,take heed that thou makest nothing but a goblet of my clay,haply when it is full of wine I may revive .

1 17.

My heart does not distinguish between the bai t and the trap,one counse l urges it towards the mosque, another towards

the cup ;

nevertheless the wine -cup, and th e loved one , and I cont inuallyweek".

are be tter, cooked, in a tavern , than raw, in a monastery .

1 18.

I t is morning : let us for a moment inhale rose -coloured wine ,and shatter against a stone th is vessel of reputa tion and honour;le t us cease to strive after what has long been our hope ,and play with long ringle ts and the handle of the lute .

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22 Ruba’

iyat of Omar Khm dm

1 25.

Darvtsh ! rend from thy body the figured veil,rather than sacrifice thy body for the sake of that veil

go and throw upon thy shoulders the old rug of povertybeneath that rug thou art equal to a sultan .

1 26.

Behold the evil conduct of this vault of heaven,behold the world—empty by the passing away of friends ;as far as thou art able live for thyself for one moment,look no t for to morrow, seek not yesterday, behold the present !

1 27 .

To drink wine and consort with a company of the beautifulis better than practis ing the hypocrisy of the zealotif the lover and the drunkard are doomed to hell,then no one will see the face of heaven .

1 28.

One cannot consume one'

s happy heart with sorrow,

nor consume the pleasure of one’

s life upon the touchstone ;no one is to be found who knows what is to bewine, and a loved one , and to repose according to one

'

s desire ,M e things are necessary .

1 29.

This heavenly vault , for the sa ke of my des truction and thine ,wages war upon my pure soul and thine

sit upon the green sward , 0 my ldol ! for it will not be long

ere that gte en m rd shall gmw from my dust and thine .

What profits in our coming and going ?

and wbere is the woof for the warp of the stufi'

of our life ?

burns away to dust l and where is the smoke of them ?

Engh’

sh Translation 23

131 .

Flee from the study of all sciences—‘

tis better thus,and twine thy fingers in the curly locks of a loved one—‘

tis

be tter thus ,ere that fa te shall spill thy bloodpour the n the blood of the bottle into the cup t is be tter thus .

132 .

Ah ! I have brushed the tavern doorway with my moustaches ,I have hidden farewell to the good and evil of both worlds ;though bo th the worlds should fall like balls in my stree t,seek m e,

—ye will find me sleeping like a drunkard .

133.From everything save wine abst inence is bes t ,and that wine is best when served by drunken beauties in a pavilion ,

drinking, and Kalendarism , and erring, are best,one draught of wine from Mah to M ahi is best .

134 .

This heavenly vault is like a bowl, fallen ups ide down ,

under which all the wise have fallen captive ,choose thou the manner of friendsh ip of the goblet and the jar,they are lip to lip , and blood has fallen be tween them .

135.

See , the skirt of the rose has been torn by the breeze ,the n ightingale rejo ices in the beauty of the rose ;

sit in th e shade of th e rose , for, by the wind, m any roses

have been scattered to earth and have become dust .

136.

H ow long shall I grieve about what I have or have not ,

and whether I shall pass this life light -heartedly or not ?

Fill up the wine -cup, for I do not knowtha t I shall breathe out th is breath tha t I am drawing in .

24 Ruba’iyat of Omar K hayyam

137 .

Subm i t no t to the sorrow of this in iquitous world,rem ind us no t of sorrow for those who have passed away,give thine heart only to one jasm ine -bosomed and fa iry-born ,

be not without wine , and cast no t thy life to the winds .

138 .

Though thy life pas s s ixty years , do no t give upwherever thou directest thy steps , walk not save when drunk ;be fore they make the hollow of thy sku ll into a jar,lower not the jar from thy shoulder, ne ither relinqu ish the cup.

139.

One draught of old wine is better than a new kingdom ,

avo id any way save that of wine—‘

tis better so ;

the cup is a hundred times be tter than the kingdom of Feridun,

the tile that covers the jar is be t ter than the crown of Kai

Khosrii .

1 40 .

Those , 0 Saki, who have gone be fore us ,

have fallen asleep, O Saki, in the dust of self-e steem ;

go thou and drink wine , and hear the truth from m e ,

whatever they have sa id, O Saki , is but wind .

1 4 1 .

Thou hast broken my jug of wine , 0 LordThou hast shut upon me the door of happiness , 0 Lord ;thou has t spilled my pure wine upon the earthmay I perish ! but thou art s trange , O Lord !

142 . f l uff/“lO heaven ! thou gives t some th ing to every base creature ,thou suppliest baths, and m illstreams , and canals ;the pure man plays hazard for his n ight ’s provis ionswouldst thou give a fig for such a heaven ?

English Translation 25

1430 heart ! at the mysterious secret thou arrives t not ,

at the conce its of the ingen ious phil phers thou arrives t not ;

make thyself a heaven here wi th wine and cup ,

for at that place where heaven is , thou mayst arrive , ormayst no t .

1 44 .

Thou eates t always smoke from the kitchen of the worldhow long wilt thou sufi

'

er m iseries concerning what is or is not ?

thou des irest not a st ock in trade , for its source weakens ,and who will consum e the capital, see ing that t hou consumes t

all the profit ?

145.

0 soul ! if thou canst purify thyself from the dust of the body,thou, naked spirit , canst soar in the heavens ,the Empyrean is thy sphere,— let i t be thy sham e ,

that thou comest and art a dweller within the confines ofearth .

1 46 .

I smote the glass wine -cup upon a stone last night,my head was turned that I did so base a thing ;the cup sa id to me in mys tic language ,“I was like thee , and thou also wilt be like me .

1 47 .

Grasp the wine-cup and the fiagon, O heart ’s des ire !pleasantly, pleasantly, and cheerfully, wander in the garden

by the river brink ;many are the exce llen t fo lk whom m alicious heavenhas made a hundred times into cups , and a hundred times into

fiagons .

148 .

I n a thousand places on the road I walk, Thou placcat snares ,Thou sayest , “I will ca tch thee if thou p lacest step in themin no smalles t thing is the world independent of Thee ,Thou orderes t all things , and calles t me rebellious .

26 R uba'

iyat of Omar Khm dm

149.

I des ire a lit tle ruby wine and a book of verses ,just enough to keep me alive and half a loaf is needfuland then, that I and thou, should sit in a deso late placeis be tter than the kingdom of a sultan .

150 .

Do not give way so much to vain grief,—live happily,and, in the way of injust ice , se t thou an examr>le of j us tice ,s ince the final end of this world is nothingness ;suppose thyse lf to be not hing, and be free .

Gaze as I may on all s ides ,in the garden flows a stream h om the river Kausar,the desert becomes like heaven , thou mayst say hell has

disappeared ,

sit thou than in heaven with one heavenly-faced .

152 .

B e happy ! they se ttled thy reward yesterday,and beyond the reach of all thy longings is yesterdaylive happily, for w ithout any importunity on thy part yesterday,they appo inted with certa inty what thou wilt do to-morrow,

yesterday !

153.Four out the red wine of pure tulip colour,draw the pure blood from the throat of the jar,for to -day, bes ide the wine -cup , there is not , for me ,

one friend who possesses a pure heart .

154 .

To the ear of my heart Heaven whispered secretlyThe commands that are decreed thou mayst learn from me

had I a hand in my own revolutions,I wo uld have saved myself from giddiness .

English Translation 27

155.

I f a loaf of wheaten -bread be forthcom ing,a gourd of wine , and a thigh -bone of mutton ,

and then , if thou and I be s itting in the wildernes s ,that would he a joy to which no sultan can se t bounds .

156 .

I f henceforth two m easures of wine com e to thy hand ,drink thou wine in every assembly and congrega tion ,

for H e who made the world does no t occupy Him selfabout moustaches like thine , or a beard like m ine .

157 .

Had I charge of the matter I would not have come ,and likewise could I control my go ing, where should I go ?

were it not bett er than that , that in this worldI had nei ther come , nor gone , nor lived ?

158 .

The month of Ramazan passes and Shawwal comes ,the season of increase , and joy, and story-tellers comes ;now comes tha t tim e when Bottles upon th e shoulder !they say,

—for the porters come and are back to back .

s un or rue guaramns .

Written by the humble slave , who is in need of merciesof Eternal God , Mahmud Yerbfidaki . Fin ished in the lastdecade of Safar, with bless ing and victory, in the year Eighthundred and s ixty-five of the Hijrah of the Prophet , uponwhom be peace , and benediction, and honour ; in the capital

May God mos t high pro tect her from evils .

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The Origmal M anuseripf 31

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B IBLIOGRAPH ICAL REFERENCESWith the Abbreviations need in the Notes to the Text and Translation .

I N order to save reiteration in referring to the translations,texts, and other authorities consulted in the construction of thiswork, they are referred to in the no tes in the following mannerC.

—The transcript of the MS . No . 1548 in the Asiatic Soc iety’

s

Library at Calcu tta , wh ich Prof. Cowell had made for

Edward FitzGerald (ride I ntroduction).Pe—The MS . in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris . Sup

p lenient Persan , No . 823.B . iL—The Bankipur MS . described on page xi (Introduction).L a—Thfi Lucknow lithographed editionS . P.

—The edition lithographed at St . Petersbnrg in th e yearA.H . 1306 (a n . whic h is copied from an edition lithographed at Tabriz, mu . 1285(M ) .

B .—The Bombay lithographed edition of 1880 . I t is almostiden t ical with the Lucknow Edition .

ruba ’

m no t numbered in any ot the above but lhave numbered my tor convenience oi reierenee . The numbersin the lithm y

may be tahen as correct ; those in the M S . are as

correct as m oan make theu regard being had to theOriental hablt ot

'

writing extra quatraina in the m rgina—fi leasL theyare very closely approximate .

N -j . B. N icolas . Les Qua trains de Kheyam , traduits duPersan .

” Paris , 1867 . 1mprim erie lmp6riale .

W H—E H . Wh infie ld . The Quatrains of Omar Khayyam .

The Persian text with an English verse translation .

London , 1883. Truhner.

F. L—Edward FitzGerald’

s poem , xet edition . London, 1859.

F. 11 .—Ditto, 2nd edition . London , 1868 . Quaritch .

F . iii .—Dit to,3rd edition . London, 1872 . Quaritch .

F . iv .—Ditto , 4th edition . London , 1879. Quaritch .

F . v .—Ditto, sth edition . London , 1890 . Macmillan .

De T.—Garc in de Tassy. Note sur les Rubaiyat de ’

0mar

Khaiyam .

" Paris , 1857. Imprimerie Imperiale . (Ex tractfrom the j ournal Aantique,

L . R . Le tters and Literary Rema ins ofEdward FitzGerald .

London , 1889. M acm illan . 3vols .

116 B id ingrapln'

ea l K eir-t am

Da—N. H . Dole .“Rubdiyat of Ou r Kh yyim : Erg l

’

n h ,

in w eordana with the teat ot’

Edward FitnGen ld’

s ver-é on .

end othermaw ial." Boston, 1896. J. Kn '

g h t .

“A Reviewot tbe Algebra ot Omarw-u .

“

Sp h w .“Catalegae of the Arahic, Pu sian, and

Hindu-tarry Mamncripts ot the libraries d the lfings of

Oudh .” V0L l . Calcutta, 1854 .

Mp Mantic ut tair, ou le langage dea oiaeanx , parFerid ud din

M il n pnhlll en persan par M . Garcia de Tas y. Paris ,N37. Translation. Paris, 1863.

l’ .N.-“P¢nd Num b . on is livre des Conseils de Férid-eddin

Atm nu dult ot publié par M . le

Pat io, 1819. Persian text and translation with variorumM OI .

(Juliana—When a lert ing to this work I have used the tex tprinted from the Calcutta edition by Francis Gladwin in

1806. 1w lu d bySIe . Gore Onaeleyam mnu Bog) : theTranslation privately printed b f mem bers of the KamaM antra Boom at “Benares ”

(London) in 1888 ; and thestandard tu n atlon of Edward B . Eastwick (last edition,Landau. l lflo ; Trtlhnor).

"madame—When referring to this work, I have used the twoBritish Museum MSS. Add. 7775 and and the

in h alation privately printed tor the members ot the Kama5mm Society at Benares

"(London) in 1887 .

Steinm p“A Conlprehensive Persian English Dic tionary .

being johnson and Richardson ’

s Persian, Arabic, andEnglish Dic tionary.

"revised, enlarged, and entirely

constructed. by F. Steingase, Ph .D. London (W. H .

Allen 01 a .n.

Norm—I t may ba talran n a general rule that , in the actual nem,

whereL . is mentioned B . ia implied ; that is, of coursen vhen

references are given to both authorities in the headnote to a

quatrain .

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NOTES .

1 .

T 111 8 quatrain is C . 1174 . P . 4. B . ii. 30a . L. 423. S . P . 228. B . 4 19. N . 229.

W . 268 . and (as also the following one ) is ou t of its dlwin order. and was probablyplaced at the commencement of this MS . to satisiy some scruple of the writer.

Mahm iid Yerbfidi lt l . Edward FitzGerald (F. v . . Pre face . pp. 1 4 . 15) remarksconcern ing it : "The scribes oi the Oaiord and Calcutta MSS . seem to do their

work under a sort of protest. each beginning with a tetras tich (whether genuineor not ) tsken ou t of its alphabetlcal order. . . . Tbe BodleianQuatrain pleadsPantheism by way of justification :

M I f l m fl

upon a looser CreedHave strun

gtthe jewe l ot cood -deed.

IA t this oneyth ing m Atonement plead.

That One for T o never did mis—m d .

’

The Calcutta MS . begins with one of expostulation . supposed (says a no ticeprefixed to the M S . ) to bave arisen trom a dream . in which 0mar

'

s m0ther

asked about h is future fate . It may be rendered thus :O Thou who burn

'

st in Heart ior those who bnrnI n H ell. wh ose tires th

mahould zieed in turn

H ow long be on th em . God l'

Why. who art u to t

md e to learn P

’W

This is quo ted by Dr. Sprenger as the first te tras tich ot th e M S. in the library oi

the K ings oi Oudh and msy be literally rendered :"O drnnken studr

'

m t to be burnt .Woe ! that the firem all b laze h '

orn you .

I t also figures as B . ii. B . 755. N . 459. W . 488 .

1 . There are several such

it woflh while to call at tention to them .

a. The phrase gauhar suflan‘z flo thread pearis . and is uaed in Persian to

mean “to write verses ." or to tell a story . C] . M . . l . 378 :"Beho ld the

pearls oi’

the sword of my tongue : every pu rl that falls from my mouth on thypath comes from the bottom Compare Hafiz'

s :"When thou

3.my heart .

” I n this line we have an echo of the expression in fi v a m."the

Sin wherewith the Face ot Man is blacken'

d .

"which he tookfrom M ll . say-237 .

4 .

SF - because that .

6. I n this line Omar boasts that he has never questioned the Unity ot

God . M id M ‘ s - to acknowledge One God . M . . ll . 1 16." Keep

steadfast in unity. and keep away from and 3210 . and chap. alii . :The valley of the

(Notes to pnge 1 19mean d ering: n o .)

Transcript and Translation

fir-5

r-S‘“n u b-M l!

1 .

I F I have‘

never threaded the pearl’ of Thy service ,‘

and if I have never wiped the dust of sin from my facenevertheles s , I am no t hope less of Thy mercy,‘

for the reason that“I have never said that One was Two "

2.

If I talk of the mystery with Thee in a tavern,

it is better than if I make my devo tions‘be fore the M ihrab‘

without Thee10—2

1 19

1 20 Notes

2 .

This quatrain is C. 272 . P. 7 . B . if. 294 . L. 427. S . P . 22 1 . B. 423. N . 222.

W . 26a . I t is one of those that Fit sGerald reproduced almost faithfu lly (P. i. .

No . 56 : F. v . . No . and scarcely altered in his own four editionsAnd this l know : whether the one True Ligh t

K indle to Love . orWrath consume me quite .

One l

Be t ter than in the Temple lost outright.1 . Tbe M ihnib is the spot in a mosqne giving the exac t dh e ction of Mecca .

towards which all M uslims turn in pr-ayer.

2 . The nema are the prayers pra cribed by M uhammadan law to be

repeated five times a day. th e panj waht - i - nencdx ’ (side post . They are

respectively the m a -sw eem = morning prayers said before dawn : the

um ax-i-pish in1’ m idday prayers ; the nemae o i-dignr

” afternoon prayers :the s en ds -whim “prayers immediate ly after sunset : and thew-lu -i‘hhuj o

tan u a prayers before bed . L. reads the line .

"Since then I do no t make a

pretence ofprayer before the Mihrab.

"

l‘. O

i l. J‘l )

w flf r és d um t‘eb

re“) J“! u ) M n (

5) W fi r‘ (

‘l M (

3) w “(2)

e »; e ar-f t“) sf 930) “

if as)» re

h ’a ‘rm i n

1“i“(”l M 3“l") M 3“ N “h is as

J)“(“l W 4 )“no) r er“ r“3“(”l

W e'fl an s in 4& r’ s q

“M ekb f e

l‘ f r‘ f fle‘e h}

M e‘? "h w y

fi ver-Q

fi re“on , “4 °

4‘ U”W W)

3. C] . the ap pellation ofM uhammad .

"first and la t of pro phets .” C] . M

I. 176 :“Oh God ! who but Thou is infinite ? Who is without beginning or

ending ?“4 . Vide note 5. q. 122 .

3.l do not find this qua train in any other text . L. 2 (B . ii 13. S . P . 12.

B . a. N . 1 2. W . 1 1) begins like it . but ls really quite diflerent .

1 . Literally. “Do not give from (your) hand .

4 .

B . ii . P. . or N .

r. Uterally.

"Upon the fire ofyour own anger do not canse anyone to slt .

h x w f ls dfl‘)“ne w “w -e q

‘f en M i n m q é fi e'

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1 22 News

2 . There is a parallel passage in“I i thou art wounded. tell no

one oi ih add wound to wound aud do not oomplain .“

5.

This quatrain is C . 7. P. 2 19.

5. and is no doub t the saurce oi FitzGerald'

e quatrain (F. i . 74)"Ah ! M oon oi myDehghh who know

'

st no waue

The M oon oi I-ieav’

n is rifing onee again :

How oit hereaiter rising shall she look

The quatrain is altered . bu t hardly. l think. impmved in Fl y . CLM M .

xii. 84 :"Penu che questo di mai non raggiorua

"

1 . C

2 .

L . reads “passionate heart. ‘

3. Here we have three meanings oi the word m .‘ The m on b t heam ).

a beaufiful mh trm and a month .

o i thee zeverymonth she swoons in her stupefaction .”

4. N . reads bigurd¢d‘ moons) shall revolve . etc . G ra ds

bitdbAd lti 5 W . reads

bim ed a This is given as a good epecimeo ot'

the kind

o i verbal variations to be iound between the various texts and mss . In iu ture i

do not propose to set ou t variations wheo eo minute as this .

6

This quatrain is C . 6. P . 316. B . ii. 1 2. L. 22. S . P . 1 1 . B . no . N . 1 1 . W . 10.

1 . C . . B . ii. . P. . and W . read M irt h -best.

“fl Wr 5Jv e d 00 4» ed 0)

Wr o ut ! (9 “M Wp flj 0

¢ flé ar rh f f° ¢ flv f f (a)

W fl w r flu f M i r ffli‘r m

Transcript and Transla tio n 1 23

w he neh

ow“? M ‘) 15

‘r ‘eL—O’r

‘ M

if thou hast a des ire for eternal peace ,fret thyself always and harass no one .

’

5.

Since no one will guarantee thee ‘a to -morrow,

make thou happy now this love -s ick heath“drink wine in the moonlight, 0 M oon, for th e moon

8

shall seek us long ‘and shall not find us .

6 .

The Qur'an , which men call the Supreme ‘Word,they read at intervals but no t continually,

1 24 Notes

2. M mey mean d ther a meu uring markor a written line z so . m tt-io

W ‘may mean either the hnes engn ved upon tbe inside oi a goblet to meam re

the dn ogt the edge or rim oi the gob le t itseli. P. reads °‘on tbe rim oi

3. $0 . 6yct’ means either a marit or signmr a verse oi the Qur'in. The

whole line is an elaborate p lay upon these words .

4 . C . and W . . M ani has":"(a text ) is clear or luminous . N . t onda

”M i mi ‘s "there is a preeep t or (divine ) law .

5. The w0rd medan having aleo the meaning‘ wine . this line migh t be

rendered.

“Which in all p laoes they m d as This form ol'

pun ls

ca lled them . Verse s in praise o l wine werewand are trequently engraved round

wine -

gob le ts in Peu ia . Allusion is made byEdward PiteGerald to jamshyd'

s seven

ringed cup . The eeven lines alluded to were ealled respectively the m a

or mark of Oppression : the km -i-B ogbddd.‘ or mark of plenty ; thethe hllc tb i

basmkw'ormarkoi all wiadom the m -1530 9 0r blackmarlt zthe khatl-i-ésu .’

or mat h oi tears : the kbe tt pot ter’s mark; and the hhatl -i

warm ."or lowest mark.

7.

This quatrain is C . 17 . P . 24 1 . 8 . ii. 17. S . P. 19. B . 28 . N . 19, W . 22. in all

oiwhich lines z and ggare transposed . l t is also L .3o . which is a good deal varied .

1 .

lovers .

2 . C P B . ii. . N . . and W . read in km “- this desolateou tskirts ot

'

a town .

-ie wh0 w0uld live in

pm must retire . like a drunkard among3.

renounced his iuture hopes ior the iorbidden p leasures oi this world. b reads

line . Th e third and iourth lines in L . are entirely difl‘erent to the 0ther teatts .

tavern to pay his score . will never be an inhabitant of

8 .

This quatrain is C . 102. P . 70. B ii . 32. L. 65. S . P . 75. B . 64 . N . 75. W . 77 .

1 . «Hui -m m means prohably“people of this time .

s »u (t; h » a) e

m» (a) w e (2) a s u a)

M u m) e lm w i s e) an al-H ") M B 0)

w »w (u) e » e‘w“) v ) » as»; w

Jr‘“ w e} ; as» m o J» a » so col?

we lt-“f o rm er or ”) ("l

M fi fi qflw fi “f

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1 26 Notes

2 . C uses different phraseology to express the same meaning !

3. Literally. When thou openest the eye ofwisdom . etc .

9.

Th is quatrain is C . 48. P . 108 . B . ii. 28. L. 8 1 . S . P . 28 . B . 77. N . 28.W . 32.E . C . 5. and may be said to have inspired FitzGerald '

s quatrain (F . i . 35. F . ii . 39.F . v . 36

I th ink the vessel that with fugitiveArt iculation answer

'

d . once did live .

And drink; and ah ! the passive lip I kisa’

d .

How many kisses might it take—and give !

C . 426. ending in beach . is identical . save for line 2. which reads : and m lip to

lip with a sweet sweetheart . "

1 . The other texts all read and was enslaved by the curly head of a

swee theart .

" 1

2 . Other texts read "bargird .

"8

This quatrain is P . 193. B . 11 . 44 . L . 2 16. B . 213. and W . 1 17. but I donot find it in C . . S . P . . or

Transcript and Translation

M )fi l) ! w 65d-fll

W ) l M J¢J

w al 5JJc l) ! ss‘) ss‘

ssb f -U J 30W“

that person upon whom thou leanes t entirely,’

when thou exam inest him close ly,”he is thine enemy .

9.

This j ug was once a plaintive lover as I am ,

and was in pursuit of one of comely face ;‘

th is handle that thou seest upon its neckis an arm that once lay around the neck ’

of a friend .

1 0 .

Ah , woe to that heart in which there is no passion,

which is no t spe ll-bound by the love of a heart-cheered

1 27

1 . B . ii . and L read without wine .

“7

This quatrfin ia c . 30 . B . L. 133. S .P. 24 . B . 130 . N . 24 . W . 28 . and

in it we find the sentimw t of Pitege rald'

s quatrain w. v . 8) that made its first

appearance in F. ii. . and was never altered . The more direct inspiration of

that quatrain came . n0 d0ubt . from th e 47th qua train of this M S . (ma yest) .

1 . C . . B . ii. . L . . N s ud w . read u wbet . ‘which conveys rather the ideaofa passing period or crisis . than that 0f a lw gthy seas0n .

2 . N

3. B . ii L . . N . . and W. read kdm fie tyr.’ a synonym . C . reads for this

line ." l make a wine odrinking. for

error of the scribe in my copy. his eye hav ing wandered to the fourth line .

4 . C . . B . ii . . N and W . all read "Do no t reproach the wine .

not me .

5. L. reads It is pleasant. because it is bitter.

“Vide post. note to q . 89.

6 The word “acrid " is no t quite right . Binning (ride p. xxv note 2)

observes very apposite ly (vo l . ii. . p . 331 . note) : "The word nee/chaos“ex

presses a combination oi sweet and acid flavour. common t0 the juioe of many

express this z for l suppcse a mongrel term lihe ° dul004 cid’

oan hardly be

called an English word .

This qua train is P . 1 24 . B . ii . 37. L . 4 1 . S . P . 26. B . 38. N . 26.

and W . 3c .

1 . dart rasi .‘ a literally. “arriv ing of the hand at ." 12a . power.

it“) “war m M t’) w e) w e)

“W “ él‘w hm v i e w) s e w - o r) «e s-w e e)

ev er ? )

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2 . shaw l - literally. “love-sick. In C . the line ends “for your heart

3. C . . B .

.

ii . N and W. all read ‘HW "' for this . meaning‘m d.

upshot. remainder. rather than as here .“value . beauty

13.

This quatrain is P . 194 . W . 1 16. de T . 2 . and this and No . 80 (q. a part). butesmcially this one . give us th e original sources of FitzGerald

’s quatrain (No . 4 in

all his editions) :Now the New Year. reviving old Desires .Th e thoughtful So ul to So litude retires .Where the White Hand of Moses on the BoughPuts out . and jesus from th e ground suspires .

I t is one of the quatrains found only in the Bodleian M S . and in P.

1 . Vide no te 1 to q. 1 2.

joy. is Spring. Th e line migh t be rendered.“Now that happ inees is within

rm h of the world.

"

z u d ah dd tm means hon the hearg alive in the spiritual sense of the

mys tic or inifiawd . as opp osed to th e pleasme-eeekers of the world indicated

in the firs t line . B .

’

e“thought

fu l soul"is a good rendering. W .

‘

s rendering . “And lively hearts wend forth.a joyous band. " is . I think. unfortunate .

3. The White Hand of Moses is a reference to the sign of his election

given to M oses on M oun t “And he pu t h is hand in to hisWe

where th e miracle is stated to have been performed before Pharaoh : “And hedrew forth his hand ou t of his bosom . and beho ld. it appeared white un to the

spectators .

"The lu rned commenta tor Al Beidawi says that M oses was a very

swarthy man. sud that “his hand became bright like the sun .

" C] . M . . 1. 453,a re ierenoe to this mme mirac le .

4 . The rev ivifying propertiee of the breath of jesus are alluded to alike in

Christian and Muhammadan traditions . In theQur'in . ch .

“I willnmke before you oi clayas it were the figure of a bird : then l will breathe thereon

and it shall become a bird. je llal’

ud-dtn . commenting on this passage refers to

Christ's miracles of th e raising of Lazarus . the widow'

s son. and the daughter ofthe ruler of the synagogue . We find reference hereto aleo in the 43rd quatrain of

\Vhin6eld'

s tex t : “Since I sa breathed new life in to my soul." There is a bm tiful

reference to this life -giving breath in the W hat nimab of Ferid -ud-d ln Attar.

“I f someone was resuscitated by the hreath ofjesus .

"m

This quatrain is P . 66. B . ii . 135. L . 64. B . 6 1 . W . 1 15. and is foundonly in the Bodleian M S . and the Lucknow lithographed edition by W . The

object ive aa-ra that commences the first hne maku the meaning of the Bodleian

quatrain almost hopeless ly obscure . or. rather. makes literal trans lation imposs ible .W . has grasped

th e meaning . but his sham ing lines do not exactly repra en t the Persian .

B . ii. reads gtiytt.’ “as one migh t say.

"“as it were .

“which mahes sense and has

the authority of age .

Knowledge .

”

2 .

‘Because in this path no one is

pertect .

B“'

we) “i. . w e)“ri d“

it ; (9) (

8) M ) J H f N) out )" 65 ix) (

7)

Transcript and Translation 131

W W HJJ) ‘ré d l afiflclké

“at l—H bed -9t s

’L? ov‘

u p H sf iflM ) J d i d w ) l 6 M i)

waste not thou th is mom ent if thy heart be no t m ad ,

’

for the value”of the remainder of this life is not manifes t .

13.Now that there is a poss ibility of happiness ‘ for the world,ova

-

y living heart ’ has yearnings towards the de sert,upon every bough is the appearance of Moses

’ hand,’

in every breeze is the exhalation of j esus’ breath .

‘

1 4 .

For him for whom the fruit 01 the branch of truth has not grown ,

‘

the reason is that he is no t firm in the Road .

‘

132 Notes

3. The preciae meaning of this line in th is place is obecure . l take it to

mean that mea ahake the looee bough that bears the fruit of knowledge in vain .

L . reads : “Everyone bas struck the looee bough with impotent hand .

” The

variant in the Paris M S . tahes us n0 furthu .

4 . M eaning. life begins anew each day. and the Last Day will be idea tical

with the Day ofCreation .

15.

This quatrain is cne of the few that seem to be linhed with a precediu or

M SS and the Imcknow editiou : it is P. 1 14 .

reproduced as W . 1 14 . I t formed the original of P. v . 66 . which did not make

its appearance until 7 1 . the tw0 last lines difiering

I sen t my Soul through tbe lnvh ib le.

Some let ter of that After-iife to apell :

And by and by my SOu l returned to me .

R ere we have an echo of PitzGerald‘s study of M . Cj . l. 3o3(Term inal Eas y.

Vide in his own translation of tlu t poem

I was tbe Sin that from Myaelfrebell’

d

l the Remorse tha t tow'

rd Myselfcompell‘

d

And eancell‘

d

Was but Myself toward Myself : and YourArrival but Myaelfat my own Door.

1 The LM rl h’

ateu are the Table t and Pen where-ith divine deu ees ot

bewha t sbould all time were writ ten.

Tablet of divine dea e ea and the xalam appearedmanifest .

“

fi s d s q-f u ff fi -‘S

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3.

18.

M t rl in is C. xx3. P . no t , B . ii . 75. L. 314. B. an . and W. ru . C] .

m u m ol “Dm h ond Dru g .

"w u kuov n to th e ahd u t W

m w m we would of Mb ufim Folk (L 0. m l.“

Transcript and Translation 135

gim me -im rnsec olonmd as thy cw s .

int this penitenoe'of mine is as fi ll of tanglee as thy enrls .

x7 .

Th e spring lre eae‘ hb ws sweedy npon tbe b oe of the m ,

na hing thon canst n y of yesterday that is M is m ,

be m and do not spa k d m day, la to<h y is m

18.

B ov hq é all l thrw hricks npon the u fine of lh e m ? ‘

[ m w 'fl‘the idd -v a tfi ppu s o‘the m oa f

l H

136 Nam

4 . In L and wlth a sligh t veriatlon in BJL theae two linee rend"To -nigh t l n n occupied with h ir yonth s .I deeive wine and a loved ono—whn ere heaven m d hell ?"

19.

This quatrain is C . 64 . P. 95. B . ii . 77. L . 40. SP . 37 . N . 38 . W. 41 .

Then u id a awond—"Ne‘

er a peevh h boyWould hru k the bowl fi'

om which he dm nk in joyAnd He that fi th hia hand the vesael made

Will sm'ely no t in nfter wrath dnstroy.

”

r.

Why shonld he permit ."etc .

fart i nnd k rends da t hands.3. C and BJt ru d

w

SirWflhamJM m his deligh tinl”Gram -r”

(London. 177 :

and og. p . 9x). jnst ly obaervee :"The nonn sar hu a nnmber oi difierm t m .

nnd is thmd ore the most difi cnh word in the p ersinn h ngmge zit dgnifies w

m fim its mu ning ts w vague that tt seem a m explefive"

4 .

5. P. and l . . uae the synonym I am not sm that flhe ingredientsol n drinkthat he has wmponnded

"wonld not he n hettermndering of this hne .

The reinrenoee to this qm tn in m somewhnt cnnfnd ng : compare C . z3and55. B . ii . “and“. N . zz nnd 4z, S . P . th e neu net to itms n

whole . is P . 162

l im x h the n me u t h e rmM W afiJine s . Thh line h not at nll in

C . or N .

Une z ls the snme u c . L. N . zz. line x

(van ) : nnd W . 26 . line 1 (van ).

It onntaim the germ oi P. v . 28-9 :“I ceme like water. and like wind l gn.

e tc znnd this qnatrain and No. 1 7m m “P. i. 37. which he elintinntedin its oomflete iorm from nll snbneqnent editiom :

Ah ! fill the Cnp : whnt hnots it to repent

Why ire t abont them ii To -day be eweet l

Compare d so the no tee to q . u r.

x. a grent rivu ' iormod ot m y amnflm m a ph a

z. This line in C and W . ru ds ;“Theee tv o or three

deys ot the pu'lod ol my exmenoe pm by.

"

v ind in the dm '

t ."

w e) Jrfl‘) d b ? ) “w ‘ fll

M W W : W H‘M W M f fl f 'w h fld t d flW “& o 5§ w

mu n -mm ”t o

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138 Nous

4 . m m In c . . P 3. ii. . and a rm s :“So long as x live l will not

a. .t32

s

49. B . ll . 36. L . 94. B . 90. and w . n o . without

md v .3o ; ll 33. B . transh tu lt ah omm fi)

What. without asking. hither hurried uln a ?And. wlthont u klng. M aM hnrrlod hence l

0h . mnny n Cnp oi thls torblddenWlneMm dmwn the memory ol ths t lu olence l

C] . Inform . xxiv. n o : 0 glustizia dl Dlo. gm t‘

am m !

x. Cou pon P3: Pin t Morning ofCa ution .

“

a. No doubtJn oa npoeing his two fim lim Fl erd d had d w in his mind

C . 333. which ls N . "7 d . x43. which m y bo m den d thus z'“thew “. mmym ho brongh t m into exh tenoe

v hnt do l gnln hom llio u ve mynm m m mlt) ?Wo oomo to m end oi lh nnd do not know whu m

x. An nllnsion to his h thet‘s m omm a“which he tookhis

m pm tkm m d a tb m fim to hls m w h bom

w i 'w -uw m m u f f-A nn e)m b fi r

’r fi

w m a p oflw

Transcript amt Translation 139

w e on ‘r w fl pb fifl

grie f has neva lingered in my mind—concern ing two days,‘

the day that has not yet ootne and the day that is pu t .

2 1 .

Seeing that my ooming m not for me the Day of Creation,‘

and y nnde sired departnre ba a is a pnrpon fiu d /or m ,’

gd np aM g’

rd wd l fi y b im O nimhle Cup o heu er,

h i v ill wu h down the misery ot the world in wine .

22.

m m sfitch ed at the tent s o t v indom

Id l into the iw naoe of m w and m enddenly hnrnt ;

14° Notes

2 . C B . ii sud w. m u m m y - n u m ber oi destiny. and

N . reeds daudlo i- ‘

ajifla flhe broker in a hurry. as e pendent doubtless to

nare -‘

ajl c the shears oi Fete in line3. We heve in this line an eeho oi the

oonclnding line ot F. v . 93. and -old my repntation ior s song.

"

23.

This quatrain is C . 96 . P. 204. B . ii . 96. L. 82. S . P . 42. B. 78. N . 43. W . 46.

and is the th ird of de T .

‘

s m mples . It is one ot a not infrequently recurrent

c lass of ruha'

i which inspired FitzGerald ‘

s remarkable quartette of quatrains .F. v . M 1 . Those quatrains . however. were directly inspired by one oi the

finest pum as in the Mantic-nt-te ir. (M . . ll . 215-218 and 2 18 hi: (error ot'

num

bering)- azo. ) Cornpare . also . the Epistle to the Rom s. ch . v . 20 :“Where

stn abonnded grsoe did mneh more nbonnd . FitzGer-eld hed elso beiore him

another rube ‘i (C . whose concluding lines eloeelyresemble th is quatrain

His Mercy ie enlled into existenee bymy sine.”

W . xzo is a vsriant oi this ls tterque tre in .

24 .

This quatra in is C . 75. P . 21 . B ii . 108. L x81 . 8 . P . 45. B . 178. N . 46 .

W . 49. end we find an echo oi it in the first line oi F. v . 63: "Oh . thrents ot

Hell snd Hopes oi Perndise .

"l t is elso the iourth oi de T .

°

s m mples .

sam a z’

ah is distinctivelyaChristlnnoell ormonastery ma m a . the sehool

at tached to a moq ne zde ifr. a oolleetive monesteryor cloister; and kiaislu. aJewish

“t ‘ W JM -ir-“e -‘

r‘ ol v ‘m

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142 Notes

2 . li terally. "in the stomach of his heart . C . . B . ii . . P N . . and w .

read ”am used; La . in his own bowe ls (or W . appends a note"Meaning souls reabsorbed into the Divine essenee have no concern with the

material heaven or hell ." 1 think the simplicity of the original sufi d entlyconveys the writer’

s meaning .

25.

In thls precise iorm this quatrain is . as iar as my researches go. only to he

found in this MS . in 8 . ii . 1 13. and in L . . where it is No . 96. with triflingverbal variations . and B . 9s ; but a variant so close in general iorm and meaning

slight variations which bring it nearer to our Bodle ian M S . . C . 67. This

ln the season ot Spring with a hourlo shaped idol.

l i there he one jar ot wine on the edge oi the field.

However much . seoording to doctrine . this may be had.l am worse than a dog ii l remember heaven .

’

but a eloeer parallel

1 . bu t in many p lw es in this Ms . itseems indieated as the oorrect rendesing oi és éaai. or oi 6: 6sgéh .

26.

This quatrain . which hu dlym h s in the texts l m using iormia u m is

1 1o. L 191 . S. P. 85. B . 189. N . 85. and w . 87 . We have here the

m timent oi the first two lines oi F. v . 47 :

When you and i behind the Vfil are past .

Oh h t the long long while the World shall last :

Drinkl iu you know not whenoe yon a me nor why.

a kl ior you h ow not why ym gm nor whu e .

Vitio note to q. s9.

“r r fl kh J-‘flm “f w elM ‘ s—U or flq

' iir‘ d t

Transcript and Translation 143

d de v

fi l ) sl~d }

an d ) “Sal’ s. b e . m y as g iv e

a n ») gal) : Lie. we) . ) .s

he who has knowledge of the secrets of God

sows none of such seed in his heart of hearts .

’

25.

I f in the season of spring a be ing. houri-shaped,gives me on the green bank of a field a goblet full of wine .(though to everyone this saying may seem uncouth)a dog is be tter than I am if thence forth‘

I p ronounce the name

of heaven .

26 .

Know this—that from thy soul thou shalt be separated .thou shalt pass behind the curta in of the secre ts of God .

1 The other texts begin. line 3. m i M ar. and line 4 . kilns/1 bash .

The meaning is not afiected .

This is quatrain C . 79. P . 228. B ii . 1 12 . L . zoo . S . P . 47. B . 197. N 48.

and W . 51 . wh ich are identica l as to the first three lines . save for unimportantsynonyms . such as W ent for shade s: in the first line . and M rs"for skid in the

th ird .

1 . W . notes here nutriyvm'os Guvuroio. Compare the Opening lines of

Shelley's Queen M ab

How wonderful is DeathDeath . and his brother Sleep !

2 . C . . B . 11 L . . N and W . all read for nu mber. bs-ss‘

r-i-M ’

beneath the earth . and begin the line"sus i kbi r. as passisi .

38 .

This . one oi the most mystic and interesting quatrains known to me. occursonly in th is MS . and is reproduced as W . 109. A remote echo of it is to be foundin F . v . so :

Yes . and a single Alii were the clue .

Could you but find ii—to the Treasure -house .

And peradventure to run M asraa too .

"

as (’l w“0)

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146 Notes

1 .

probably a quotation . Hafiz (0de 4 16) uses the

same exprm ion ‘H e who knm the One knows allf" With all resp ect Jdifl‘

er.

The

A li] art/at is . however. a recognised oriental idiom . meaning “Alif suificeth .

”

the one nem ry letter. meaning " the One God.

"referred to again in the

fourth line as has . literally “Some-one z The One"and "One letter." 12a . the

Alif reprem dng c od as well as th e numeral “one . The whole quatrain is

mystical and doctrinal .29.

This quatrain is C . 56. P . 63. B . ii. 103. L 6 1 . S . P . 43. B . 58. N . 44 . and

There was the Door to which l ioundThere was the Veil through which l

C/. M And again :

When you and l behind th e Veil are past . etc .

F. infused into this quatrain the sentiment of M ll. 146- 133. (Terminal Essay.9 m )

1 . Literally. there is not a way ior anyone .

2 . ts’

biyab (or ta'

biyat ). an Arabic word signifying an array set out . as of

soldb rs or furniture etc . For this word C . has shs‘

beM

of the soul .”I t will be obm ed that the coup ling of these words gives quite a

new construction to the whole line .

3. C . andW . forkid: read tiralo.‘obliterating the double negative and givingus save in the dnrnheart .“etc . B . ii. and N . are identical with this .

4 . L . .

in form i z“Pity (it is) that these fab les are not short .“The line trans

lates literally. "Drink wine . for such tables are no t short. meaning. " ItThe Paris

M$ reads . “Hear thou that such iablu .

”etc . C]. M . . ll. 152-3: "They have

hau u ed memsd vm much m d reap mthe end but fcebleness m d astoundment'"

30'

It

quatrains dealing with tt m t. The whole verse is a protest against tbe

mysterymade ofholy things by the self

1 . Note in these two lines the

words sirr and its broken Arabic p lnral asrdr. aud its synonym rds . eds -M ada

means idiomatically a M fossd sea e t . such as the place of one'

s death .futum

events . etc .

2. S . P . and N . (alone ) begin the line “rd : ne wsecret must be h idden trom every nigh tingale . P. . B . ii . and L. begin n

‘

is as

m som e .

"e tc . , a slight variant of this MS .

mu wt‘ or (i ) (

3) we M (3) 5-32 a t"(l )

a». “339 (‘l r 0)w w fi w ’ lfi i‘ w (7)

Transcript and Translation

I said the Alif. My heart said :‘ Say no more .

I f One is in the house. one letter is enough .

29.

No one can pass ‘ behind the curtain that veils the secret .the m ind of no one is cogn izant of what is there ; ’

save in the heart of earth we have no' haven .

Drink wine .‘ for to such talk there is no end .

30 .

The mystery ‘ m ust be kept hidden from all the ignoble ,and the secrets m ust be wi thheld from foo ls .

’

1 47

1 48 Notes

3.diderently.

‘ B . ii . L . and N . for bq'

tii rn d MM .‘giving us . Consider

how you yourself act towards the souis of men.

“

4 . classics: means "eyes and "hope (oil s post . q . 80. note This passage might be rendered. "Our regard (for etc . , a t on ". C]. Dante .

Cosrieio. iii . 8 .

31 .

This quatrain is P . 25. C . 87 . B . ii . 60. L. 195. S . P . 31 . N . 31 . andCompare q . No . 95(post) . This quatrain inspired P. v . 71

M oves on zuor all yourPiety norWitShall lure it back to cancel halfa Line .

Nor all your tears wasb out a Word of it .

And the same idea reappears in the paralle l quatrain F. v . 73With Earth ‘

s firs t C lay they did the Ia st Man knead.

And there of the la st I-iarves t sow'

d the seed :

And the first M orning ofCreation wrote .

N . quotes in a note a para lle l passage h'

om Anwary :—J‘ I f the afiairs of this

world are not govem ed by Fate . whydo the projec ts oi men turn ont contrafiwise

to their desires ? Yes . it is Pate that leads men irresistibly towards good and bad.

and that is why their endeavours come always to naugh t .“Compare B phesians

iii. 9 :"The mystery which from th e beginning of the world hath been hid

in God .

1 . C . . B . ii . . N . . and W . for rai pisb read bsr lfib i z upon the Tablet .

Cornpare lfih a lcakm ia s.

2 .

3. P. . C . . B . ii . . L . .-In Destiny.

32 .

This quatrain is B . ii.W bu t it is the fifth of the examples given in de T .

’

s pamph let .

1 . few -

gal. the time offlowers (esp . roses )=-the Spring .

2 .

The Iab-i-kisll t is the raised embankment of grass round

a cultivated fie ld . Compare the passage in jami‘

s Beharistan (6thwent out one spring daywith a cctnpany of friends and scquaintances to enjoy theair of the fields and obtain a view ot the dm rt .

"

3. l i terally. With one . two . three pe0p le . e tc .

4 . L ior dltl reads tdu h .’

giving us“with a iewyovug houri-shaped playmat es .

"

«she ww w a s» if s. .n e)

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5. 1ndependent alike oi l slam and jndaism. the two principd creeds

io llowed ln lri n .

33.This quatrain is C . go. P . u s . L . 199. S . P . go . B . 196 . N . go. W . m. M d

2 . Jib“m dm m a. ’ comm a line 3”m 00W W W i i"x

3. L and W. ru d d

4 . It is ( m to new the inm hange of “f“(or "p " in M n .

34 .

Th is qnatrfi n is c 51 nnd m flns the

thinksome

Others . "How blest the Pu ndise to eome l "

0h . the bn ve mnd c ot n dmas t Dmm l

(mth e glorm of this World : and some

Ah . tu e the Cash nnd let the Credit go .

Nor hfi th e mmble ot a distant Drum !1 . L. and W . fw d n ew eh m 0 for

5“55 fi th m ,

n m . M S M S . m G lj'

35“s

“

2i

2 . The second line in C . reads . And that that after-M e will be pla n e twith music and brlgh a

A O)

Transcript and Translation 151

w ““r .“d sar i

“wk $ 56 ”its"a”

bring forth the cup, for those that drink the morning draughtare independent of the mosque and free from the synagogue .

‘5

33.The heavenly vault is the girdle of my weary body

Jihun ’ is a water-course worn by my filtered tears ,hell is a spark from my useless worries .Paradise‘ is a moment of time when I am tranquil.

34 °

They say that the garden of Eden ’ is pleasant with hourisI say that the ju ice of the grape is pleasant . ’

1 2—2

152 Notes

3. l t is a eommon

4 .-n to heu '

.

5. Cw m q m l q. This line refen to the het tledmms snspu rh d u

the a ts ot u kntd pd aou to m mon soldia a e tc . M GM ch n .

w u m m m mu mmSm WM Qm M Qm w . M N !

M h m m m fl fi d F. v. M u s !“M h d k l fi . m t a m -u ym m

m m : m h kM M fi fi :

m m am d fi h h m ‘

W M M m t m h

mm fi n h h h h d E k u fl m w h R a d ius

q . m d v . fi z“0 m m p fl 'fl i m fi

’r é fi i

m m ?“

1 . n fi fl b w w fi m w h d fl‘ u q q

fl‘

i s

M p fi h l g : i fi t . w h & @ n i h m“h i h g d i i fi d n w . fi t

M -‘ M fi r- u s fi—ru h h fi d y. "

L u i s - y- m a "

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154 Notes

2 .

"I t is the season ofroses nnd

wine and drunhen friends .

”

3.

37 .

I do no t to havensed it .

1 . Note the objective ra governing all that goes beiore it .

2. Literally. after my heart." is . in my heart‘s opinion .

38 .

Th is quatrain is C . 8 1 . P . 26 1 . L. 189. S . P. 93. B . 186. N . 93. and W . 95.

and we find in it the sentimen t oi P. v . 6 1 . which made its firs t eppean noe as

F. hnd C . 81 beiore him when he made his

first edition :

Why. be this juioe the growth of c od . who dnre

Blaspheme the twisted tendril as a Snare ?

A B lessing. we should use it . should we not ?

And ii n Curse .

M r. Do le (D . . p . 1 18) derives this from a quatrain N . 226 and W . 265. bnt he

had no t studied the Calcut tn and Bodleian M SS . I t is tm e that R hnd N beiore

him when he made his second edition . bnt th is C . and B . quatrain is nearer the

sentiment of his own. and N .

’

s translation takes unwarrantnble liberties withhis text .

“ r e'fls dfl s w dn

Transcript and Translation l55

M b ) are owl-V ) for“? ..s

"

“Mo i bd o a? s ale b y M }

a season of roses , and wine . and drunken compan ions’

be happy for a moment for THIS is life ! ’

37G ive me wine which is a salve for my wounded heart .it is the boon companion of those who have trafficked in love ;to my m ind

’the dregs of a s ingle draught are be tter

than the vault of heaven which is the hollow of the world '

s

skull .

38.

I drink wine , and my enem ies from left and rightsay Do not drink wine , for it is the foe of religion .

1 . A reierence to the permid on given to Muhammadans in ch . ii. oi

Qur’

an and elsewhere to slay all foes of islam .

39.

Lucknow edition. where it is 58. and it is reproduoed as w . 1o5.

1 . L. begins . "Wine ! thou art a melted ruby ." All the tex ts teem with

references to tbe ruby that" hindles in the vine “

"molten ruby“is eommonlyrecurrent in orim tal verse . Compare the pam ge in

th e Beharis tin h th Garden)Wine is said to be a molten ruby.

Cannot diseern it from melted oornelian :

Bo th are oi one essence . but in nature .

The one is solid. the otherfluid .

The one powdered oolours the hand. the other tasted mounts to the head .

2 . Literally. that is laughing with wine

3. L. begins." Cup . thou art hep e). The cln nge in these

two lines from the seoond to the third person is noteworthy.

4o .

This quatrain is C . 107 . L .

again in it the images of the earth ly cash and ha venly credit the

sensuous repose oi the des ert verses mw. 1 1 and 12) beiore reierred to .

1 . N . hegins bed

Made an inhabitant of pleasant Heaven or."ete .

’ L. reads m for gas/t .M adc me to dwell.

"etc .

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Tm nsor'ipt and Translation 159

w—b-t a ) ..alH

fl cra

M K I J4 flw a gons»

m mcats wa s re ) a)» a n

but som e food , and an adored one ,“and wine ,8 upon the green

bank of a field

all these three are cash to m e : thine be the credit-heaven

4 1 .

The good ‘and the bad that are in man

’

s nature ,2

the happiness and m isery that are predestined”for us

do not impute tha n to the heavens . for in the way ofWisdom ‘

th'

ose heavens are a thousandfo ld more helpless than thou art .

42 .

Who soever has engrafted the lea f of love ‘upon his heart .

not one day of his life has been wasted ;

160 Notes

2. b reads

4}

This quatrain is C . 47. B it 1 10. and W . 104 (W. does not c0llate

included as E. C . 4 . I t is the original oi one of F.

'

s moet beautiinl

verses . P. v. 19 (P. i 18)

I som times thinkthat never blov s so red

The me-e as wh sre some buried r bled ;

That eva '

y iiyacin th the Gae ears

Dropt in her la p irom some onoe iovely iiead .

ln this lit tie vrne is laid

Pm dsnce Baldwh tonoe my nn idl.From wt W py sparkhere let

1 . B ik L ana d flln every desert v-h ere thm k a tnhp hed

2 .

d ‘m u ’

3. L n d WJnrM n ad h g‘ a lmi.

4 . m m u m a w n m m m a mm oth GUdn :

“B e ieE madly in b ve with h m M s-d hy her

curls aad her n ole.

“Aad so m fis :

Utha t lnve ly-aid ol Shifi z v-oa ld aneap t my hu t .

I v onld give inr the bh akmole on h r cheekth d vfi s ol

ad w . 1oa.

1 . Lin

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Transcript and Translation 1 63

M “L 9 r?

.1’(L5

I f fortune place almond -sweets in thy very mou th ,beware ! swallow them not . for po ison is m ingled there in .

45'

One jar of wine and a lover’

s lips . on the bank of the sownheld k

these have robbed me of cash , and thee of the credit . ”

Som e are pledged to heaven or hell,but who ever went to hell, and who ever came from heaven ?”

46 .

O thou . whose cheek is moulded upon the mode l of the

wild rose ,

whose fac e is cast in the mould of Chinese idols ,1

164 Notes

2. W . n ys the Lnehnew edition io e eads -éit (-"iond It may

do eo in his copy. but it eertainiy doee n0t in miae . whme it reeds dietina iyM ' which neither l . nor anyone l have heen able to eonenlh nnda t tand.

M m “chech -mate

”at chees . but the terminafion h rbids m m eeeh ior

m interpretation in this ana logne. M r. £ llis oi the Brit ish M us enm sngp ts

that the u is ineerted in error. and that the scrihe meen t to eay l d . th e and ent

name ior the province oi lts trakhan . The enggeetion is an inteu s thg and

valuable one . At the n me fime l think it not impro hable that the error is in

the r878 0dition ofL . to which W . reiers .

3The Persh n cheeemen referred to m reepective ly. es) = horu - h ightM e ow - casua whenee our term bird s

Owners oi th e iamiliar iva '

y chw men the t come h'

om the i u t wiil recogniee

the ahove terms . The game is calied in Persian sh tm cares .

"

or sllelt-i

47 .

This quatr'ain variee a good deal in the texts .

its first appearanee u P. ii 8 . and was nem altered

Whe ther at Naishapfir orBabylon.

Whether the Cup with ev-e et or bitter run.

The Wine ot Liie keeps ooxing drop by drop .

The la aves Oi Uie keep falling one by one .

Thie was doub tlese one oi the quatre ins oi which P. was "reminded‘

by N .

‘

s

edition. b r“Naisheptu ' ”

occurs only in that tes t (of thoee beiore E ). (L and

1 . W . for ti es‘

m haei rm d reade tbée jh be-leb w ‘z“since the

soul comee to the lipe .

"a iamifiar 0rien tal figure ior the appmeeh oi death . Note

And . pr06 ering hia p . invite yom Soul

and hnndrede oi qumabb pam trom the Persian poe ts zasJor insu nca in

the Gulistin. chap t i.

“Since liie paeees what ie sweet and what is bitter.” Line z ot

'

N . is line 1 0t W .

There is a parallel paesege to be iound in the Gulistl n. chap . i etory xz

(Th eoks tam m m a edeed oem

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When the pure eoul is on the point ot’

dep rtnre .

What ii one diee on a throne or on the iaoe ot th e earth .

‘

5. B ere will be obeerved an echo ot P.

’

s conclnding qnatn ina Th e P.

.s.

and

No . 287 0i the a kn0w edition.

1 . n m m u m . pure wine . P. reade "eontinuel d1aughu

ofh te wine‘W - etd an . Vidrm te a n .

a. (ViaL iorhu md t givee the eynonym neu o .

’ There m otherequallyunimportant variatione in l .

err 6 9 w l‘) wh en (

‘t

‘e r ’ ér‘v eflm M v -lr okr g

—r ? ) aw l -A d e“t e le fi ‘e

fio w l wr el (P h r a s e

«gu ru W M")

3. " I trust that

Thou wilt rescue me irom thls darh water. and re

4 . is . . God Compare P. v . 51 :"They change and perish all—but He

remains .

49.

is a gm d specimen oi the quatrains that have "carpe diem

"inr their text .

There ie a suggestion also in it oi q. 68 .

1 . W means literallyflo run to and fioJo eearch .

2 . B . ii. and L . reed " this single moment d oompanionehip .”

3.sen va. ed altra viene.

”

50 .

portant variatione). and ie reproduced in w . 2 16. It conn ina l thinh the

inspiration ofF. v . 54 :

Waste not yourflourmor in the vain pun uit

Better be jocund with the iruit iul Grape.Than u dden aiter nou or bittm' Pruit .

1 .

ee l—p v b -h‘g (l)

l l}

Transcript and Translation 167

not one is on the dry land, all are in the water.

‘

One is awake : ‘ the o thers are asleep .

49

This in tellect that haunts ‘ the path of happinesskeeps saying to thee a hundred t imes a day .

Understand in this s ingle moment of thine existence ,”thatthou art not

like those herbs which when they ga ther them spring up aga in .

50 .

Those who are the slaves of in tellect and ha ir-spli tt ing}have perished in bickerings about exis tence and non-existence ;

13—2

1 . l m h b fi h .

“PmQ‘ P. n e w -h i lt .“ m a d - h i .

2. C. . P. N.. L n d' .

” M u m

3. C s Pa k Na n dW. m djfle jfl 0 h ~ -M whieh eonvepthe m e“.

4 . tam e-u nnamw ym m m q-wm m u m.

M al a y an-den u d a tion .

"

n ub -"m em oir as in this l ls .

$1

Thle qeetrdn variee a gnod deal in th e teata The perallel quatraina are

”amplee irom thle l is . m dflfi m m m jn fiq qq .

t . N .."The Path of (Divine ) Love la ds to destruction.

"i n . to

spirituel ennlhllation. C . and N . io e rM 4 -‘W reed u drflrr—t~'em 0

“irom the Booh oi Eaistence .

” Compa c t-1561 :

The peth oi love is a path to which there is no end.ln whlch there ie no m edy ior lom but to give np thd r eouls .

‘

e. C .. and N. ior aleeg read the W M dost - "hands .

M" ll. 1059-1062. “li thou becomest as l say. thou wil t not be God. butwilt be ennlhilated in fllm.

“3. li terally. “we must perish.

e ox l’)a “o-fi-‘ flo u flb fl fl fl fi i‘)

-4 0h Jolt

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4 . 8 . ii . and N . h rw nm na m d m nm m i n-p in to “.

5.

which we recogniee the"Dost into Dust and under Dust to lie .

"

53.

This quatrain is P . 310 . L. P . N . 122. and w . 149. It

1 .

and may-M u m.

"the w wine .

"L reads the line .

“To -day that is the w d

oj txistcea nothing This line ofB . is line 4 in L . Vida

q. 1 17. n0te3.

2 . Literally."in 0ur hand 0r

“t0 0ur hand .

54 .

I do not find this qua train els ewhere than at B . ii . 144 . which is identicalwith it. I ts first line . coupled with q . 95(q. gave FitsGerl ld the inspiration

Better. oh better. cancel from the ScrollOi Universe one luckies s Human Soul.

Hoarser with Angnish as the Agee roll .

I t will be obeerved that F. mieeed the significance ot the original.

1 . li tera lly. "does not hem e of another d our.

" Compare the Arabicexpression. It is Written !"

2. jigar hm means literally. “liver-blood. a universal orientaliem to

as s /“m t u rb an - r e e f

s ? ) lf fiff‘ tff ‘l )

w h e n) m n p w fl e w s o) we re “

Transcript and Translation

wJ?“ gs‘

M J“: g o A ll} . 6 6 d) d d l

w s fi fié w wdw w flw r

b

O sweet -faced Cup-bearer, sit thou not idle ,‘

give to me water, for dust I m us t become .

“53

Now that nothing but the mere name of our happinessrema ins,

the only o ld friend that rema ins is new wine ;‘

wi thhold not the merry hand from the wine -cuptod ay that no thing but the cup rema ins within our reach .

’

54 .

What the Pen has wri tten never changes ,‘

and grieving only results in deep afi iction fl

171

1 72 Notes

3. A somewhat dmilar expressioa ih M i ria m“) ea t blood " ; i1 . . to

Compare

Mntthew v iwzy“And whieh ot

’

you hy heing m oes cau edd one cuhit unto

his stnture —Rn imi Version.

55°

This quatreln is not to he iound in any oi the texts under consideru ion.

t nd h is not surprising that it has heen avoided in the Europem fi fim tor

it is one ot‘

the most ohecm and involved quntn ins in the collection. l am

1 . here taken to reia '

to the mm llydison ad. l t might he translated

“the love~sick.

z. There is a ph y upon words hu e : W 8 . hesidee mn ning“oceu

un ion.

”

3. The b ervish is a religioos m dicentn he m d aih tim m mdom) has a secondnry meening (Vih q.

4. Another instence oiOmar‘

s afleetion iorthe me d v ords d fi nflarm d .

W h a m m epplied to Du v iahes nnd the Ft ithfnl m nyz h s the

eccepwd t oQ—the mect .

$6

-1 this l s .

No m d tb lmcknov edition. There is an of P.

m m donM insp tred by a qu ut in in NW m m.

himseii m I tlflnh that the pnet intends in thfi q-nfln to m

1 .

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‘74 Notes

a.

3. L n d s“v ho in God

‘s own time v ill rise up .

" P. eeeds “-h e n tiitheym n nifi lnted will come agein.

"

S7 .

Th e -m is t s ,

M n d is h volved ia m hd m fln im

r.

a. M a m a fi flcomes fiom the hq inM ol m w h

3. M yfld tc tfi .

"

4. M m l pm thed - flw ch“

and“jar.

" W .-n in the b t i ae. u dm du s

the tv o lines :

l y it d m ifi a l -m th n b m

B e ta -de th w m z“8 . m ds m d vfi l m m b no m

I rhil tb m fi e m m w h m [ m isu si n g - tha t ;in fi rm . u m m m d u m m m a h w

“M W b M d M M G M w M M“i i-6L“h h 4 fl |l t“m : h w m d fi

3. m m -fih mm m b yu fi n m w fl a u fl. Dunn-fi

tb ien flim d fifih l pu M fi m d b n m“ d d u g i fi yfl n h a n q w u fl fl.

w e r. m n m n a d w.w um wa fi g h t ! R e a ah “c a n c m m m WJQd fi e wfi l s s p t m

r. W . q s fi ~ fi h e h u b -fl—s d |h —h t Q” u fi d h fl h e“: a : I :

th u d - fi d u h m w .

a M‘M m h n d fi

‘

m h v b

d f o d p -e

Trm cript and Translation 175

w ) H a n-9 ) J) e ta-oi aflld ) J

“43a »j ) K wu l 6 0M

Anibal a lleta —! La 6

P‘H ‘

“M ore

in the skirt of Heaven , and in the pocket of2 earth ,are creatures who , while God dies not , will yet be born .

3

57

Those whose beliefs are founded upon hypocrisy,‘

com e and draw a distinct ion be tween the body and the soul ;I will p ut the wine jar on my head , if,’ when I have done so ,

3

they place a comb upon my head,“as if I were a cock .

‘

58 .

The bodies which people this heavenly vault,l

puzzled the learned .

‘

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1 78 Notes

I . baffl es - companions . iellow-workm .

z. 8 . ii . . C . . P. . and W . rend pm "pink”which means the same .

6x.

This quatn in is W . z1z nnd de T . 7. I have not iden tified it in C . . P or

which surprises me .

I ndeed, indeed. Repentnnce oit betore

I swore—hut was l soberwhen l swore ?M d then and then came Sprtng. and Rose~in-hand

My thm dhere Penitence a-pleces tore .

1 . Referring to“thee

"ot the firct line .

s . The “old harren Reason " oi F. v . ss.

62.

This quatrain is C . 196 , P . B . ii . 167. L. 3so . B . 346, N . 463. WA 08,

E. C . 1 1 . nnd il the orizinnl ot F. v . 95, which varied but innpprecinbly in

the severnl editions :

And much as Wine hu plnyed the lnfidel

And rohh'

d me 0! my Robe oi Honour—Well,I wonder oiten what the Vintners buy

One hnli so precious ns the stufl'

they sell .

The first twa lines ln all the other tex ts (C . . P

The same rending ns

theirs is iound in the Atnsh Kndah oi Azr. I t is as tollows

As long as Venus and the M oon revolve conspicuously in the sky.

No one shall see anything het ter thnn rubywine .‘

N . reeds la‘

l - ruby : and C . reeds him - sweeter, for umbetter. I n N . this quatrain is the lns t but onmout oi its dlwt n or alphaheticnl

order. by way oi apology.

1 .

m um -mm .

Compere also the pnm ge in the l ntroduc tion to Sa’

ndi'

s Gulistan :

"R e tears not the veil ol reputation ot'

his worshippers even iorgrlevons dns,And does no t withhold their dnily nllom ce of bru d ior gm t crimes .

“

w w w m w v c un i s-4 0>

JQP '

db la‘

w'

u y s

so)» Ge sub“ss‘é ) ’

r"J“

AM 46 c o l; 0”

N ) ” L.

.

6Jfi g ab-fl ‘51 b

N ) ; e d i) ) l Pd )“r)“

6L? U

Cup -bearer, why grieve about the to -morrow of thy pa trons ? ‘

give us a cup of wine ,’ for the night wane s .

61 .

Be ing old , my love for thee led my ba d in to a snare ;

if not , how com es it that my hand holds the cup of date -wine ?My sweetheart has destroyed the pen itence born of reason,

‘

and t he passing seasons have torn the garment that pat ience

62 .

Altho ugh wine has rent my veil,‘

so long as l have a soul l will not be separated from wine ;

180 Notes

2 . This " they heiongs . as indicated. to the iourth line .

63This quatrain is only to he iound in

Ms . , aad it is reproduced sa w . 233. I ts sentiment is recognisable in F. v . 61,

and in the great quatuor F. v . 78

64 .

This quatrain (in varied terms) is C . 242. 8 . ii . 163. L. 340 . S . P . rst .

perhaps 94 .

th oi this quatrnin .2

1 .

ln my hend . a rare expressiom though as W . notee. the Persinns generallyregard the head as the seat ot

’

nll human pessions . Compnre the line in N . 139

hend that you see is so seasusj .

“x Note in ll. x and 2 the conjunct lve pronoun

L. reads “dart " for "011.

2 . B . ii . . N . and W . rend the yeerround .

w s

u e u w é fle)

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1 82 Notes

3. b reeds : “Certain pwpletell me God v ill give rep entance .

“4 . N . and W. read“gives" for“will not give "; etc. ,

"(even if) he gives it,

I will none ol it .

3. a m bed answers hu e to the u clamation "fiou l ¢sto l

65.

contains -95. incnlcnting the vm lty ot regrets over

miled reputadon or lost honour, and the iudh ty ot repentnnce .

h m hmg fimt the hm da then the mdde oi the moum then throwing water on

(Steingm j

2. m g. to whitewash m am a

3. N . and W . tor “Be happy”ra d “

give wine, ior now this vsil, etc .‘

4 . N . sppends a no te to the eflect thnt this is an epigram m inst the

tatehsm oi theQur‘

in with regnrd to pre-ordflned punishmeng which the Sufis

deny as belng contn ry to the infinite mercy ot cod.

66.

This quntrein in this identicel iorm cccurs only in this u s .

has been ndded by a h ter scrihe . Compare d so q . 146 .

1 .

Both ru dings u e v imin the spiflt oi the m hut the wd gh t ot evidenee h .

I M on the side oi geL Vidc note x, q. 35.2 . “oh m - tom

o er-f flt

') u s e ? ) w ill ? )

m e ns e s - f av e)

uW Qfi lH ‘JA w -N ;

4 b fwdrt"

or W h e

cal)”26 ) .5

4 is “Sr ) 4

A; as.f“al,

L ém w‘

N x d ‘“if“th e

ab” 5 J“cue 6 4 1W

4» seéfl e b

b -9 r ! raw

4; g'w‘f v ow e“4! AS;

they say to me , May God‘ give thee repentance !

H e himseli will not give ‘ it ; I will none of it ; let it be far

65.

I n the tavern thou canst not perform the Ablution‘save with

and thou canst not purify‘a tarnished reputation ;

is so torn that it cannot be repaired .

‘

66.

I saw upon the ten ace oi a house a mam alone ,

who trampled upon the clay,‘ holding it in contemm

“ ifl —m mmj g m d 146. 1'

eiers to the

“b i w ' m v e ll as it could , but the renda 'ing

W Q B ‘ L g s. S P. 133. B. 287, N . 153,W . 174 . and is the

Cf. Vi“NW , flit : Lo m

an . S .P. 156. B . 273, N . 156 , W 175.

M a oi tbe lan two ln F. v . 15

M N w M am’m M m tum'

d

R C am my,"but w ot mu m lyma n

“you ha d .

"P. . C . . L . ,

« w e ; 0)

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186 Notes

4 . Literally,"gold . These two lines reier to the prncties in the w oi

burying treesuee to hide it when a nigh t attackmne x) oi dscoits or m hhers h

the body aiter death . which he douhts .

5. E . C . translates "poor hrain-sick iool l“which would sptly translate

P.

'

s variant , which . hom e , he hnd not seen .

69,

This quatrain is C. 158. P. 212, B . ii. 199, L.308. S . P . 109. N . 109. nnd W .

139. It is the original oi F. v . 91

Ab ! with the Grape my inding liie provide,

And wash the body whence the liie hu died.

And h yme shrouded in the living lu i.By some no t unirequen ted Garden

-side :which mnde its first appenrance as F. i. 67. with tbe last two lines

And in the Wind ings sheet oi Vine-leai wrapt .So buryme by some sweet Garden-s ide .

C] . the story oi flippocrs tes in M . . ll . 2360-2364 : “When Hippocrates was at

the point of death one oi his pupils said to him .

‘Oh Master. when we have

1 . sinker - Beware ! C . , L , N and W . begin.“0h Friends l sustain

me , etc .‘

2 . Compare q . 67, now 4 . C . B . ii . . N . . andW. read “cheek ” ior

face .

" halt-rubs ma ns . literally, attracting straws “: hw ce“amber. the

fil a rpov of the Greeks . Cf. Geisha i rat , I . 194 :"The Truth, as amber,

attracts thee like a straw .”

3.M a j which mean the same. B . ii. is identicel with this .

70.

This quatrain occurs only in this MS . (at those underconsideration). It isprobably a casually interpolated nddru s to MalikShah .

M d kd rflfi w tm

M w fle‘r efi ‘»

Transcript and Translation 187

l) ! 6 0M“Jab ¢ l

’

Ai,i

“U7 and N ) w flu ) 4

M 5 w ) ’ .5'

(Le ) ‘r A")

mis fi t-an

J~a"5 ‘ were »

at) e lk -“l w ! x i

thou art not treasure ,‘ 0 heedless dunce ,‘ that theethey hide in th e earth and then dig up again .

69.

Take heed ‘ to stay me with the wine-cup,and make this amber face ’ like a rubywhen I die ,3wash me with wine ,and out of the wood of the vine make the planks of my codia .

70 .

O Shah ! destiny appointed thee to sovereignty.and saddled for thee the horse of em pire ;

1 . Literally."uutil he did

not place"

71 .

This quatrain is P. 1 19. B. ii . 208 . L 294 , 8 . P . 164 . B . 290, N . 164, W .

182 , and is No . 8 oi de T .

'

a enamp les . C] . M . , I .3316

The true lover must be llke fire

There can he no second though ts to the true lover: etc .

‘

1 . Literally. “it has no water. One oi the many figurative uses of no.

It has no splendour.“vulgarly speaking. cf.

" it doesn't hold water. C] .

M . . I . 1749 : I am helpless," literally . My liverho lds no water."

2 . n o s»; the third pera singA ermination sh governs s ll the antecedenta

3. l. :3167 "Can he who shsres the torment and passion ot‘

love

find rest by day or nlgh t ?“ [1 3499-3509 the story ot

’ “TheSleepy Lover, and l ’tcrgub n o, xviii :. 1o3“Ratto . ratto. che il tempo non si

perda pu'

poco amor.

“

72 .

This quatrain is C . 176, B . ii. 21 1 . L. 357. S . P . 175. B . 353. N . 175. and W.

190 . I n it we recognise the nentiment oi F. v . 27 (concerning which . however.

There was the Door to which I iound no KeyThere wss the Veil through which I migh t not see zete .

Compare Tennyson '

s lines in I n MemoriamSo runs mydream. but whs t am l ?

An iniant crying in the nigh t ;

An lninnt crying tor the light ,And with no langusge hut a cry.

1 . 11a , the orbit oi human understanding .

s w w ww s w 0)

52 1 4 4 519 9)

P w t ff ‘l ll ‘l‘w p ie—v o w e l “)

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2 Literally."when I look. G. , B . ii -nigan a ,

‘

I see .

3. Literally,"impotence is in the humi d , etc . C] . Paradise , vii. 62

M olto si mira e poco si discerne .

730

This quatrain is C . 179, L . 256. 8 . P. 176, B . 253. N . 176 , W. 191 , and we

Perp lext no more with Human orDivine .

To-morrow'

s tangle to the winds resign ,

Aud iose your fingen in the trm oi

The Cypress—slender Minister oi Wine .

C] . Paradiso, xv . 146 :“il mondo iallaoe il cui amormolte auime deturpa.

1 . N . and W. , i0r“iive thou,

"read " that thou mayst he .

“L. red s

ism bru it-i) worldly empire "

2 . t c the origlnal MS. Th e transcription ot’

this word is douhtiul. but

the hu t sense is made with bsgusil .

transcribed it .

3. This line varies considerably in the tes ts . N . and W. read “Be happyC . reads “Be happy. ior bereit ol me

and thee these mon ths and years ." L . reads “Be happy a moment, inasmuch

as this revolving sky."

4. C . and L. follow this M S. N . and W. (or"days "read "m acaw"!

74 .

and q . 82 00n ts in that dower

its first appu rance in a sligh tlymodified torm as FJt 43.1 . W is has msny flowercmeanings zone finds it used to meau narcissus

w e‘ve ? ) w‘v tr ol” n e w“

Transcript and Translation 191

Ala-oi w 3! ”( as

u!) 3! as) »

“w eis ) gs

”) o‘f rfi‘C‘L

egr‘

“so! M d b ) N) W

4» use “ “fisflgs'

“e a») a !“U; em

et e fl“fi e

s ince , so far as I can see,’ from tyro to teacher,

impotent are the hands' of all men horn of woman .

73Set lim its to thy des ire for worldly things and live 1 content ,sever

3the bonds of thy dependence upon the good and had oflife ,take wine in hand and play with the curls of a loved one ; for

quickly '

all passeth away—and how many of these days‘remain ?

74

The heavens rain down blossoms ‘ from the clouds ,thou mayest say that they shed blossom s into the garden ;

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2 . W . reads this t0 mean a vi0let jsg. bu t I iail to find his authority.

7S.

S . P . 352 . N . 182 .

and W . 197 . 1t c0ntains a humorom pm teflagainfl the doc trin0 0i pn desti

There is also here a stm ng

Why. be this juice the gr0wth ot'

God. who dare

B laspheme the twisted tendril as a Snare ?

A Bmsing, we should use it , should we not ?

And it a Curse

1 . is , sensible .

2 . N . and W . ior m btnasd read B nasd»i

mine). etc .

3. With the excep tion oi B . ii. the other tes ts re ad as m l.' jm a earlies t

eternity. tor bl asst , on the Day oi Creation . Concerning ass t.“post. q . 107,

note r.

76 .

This quatrain is C. 173. P . 189. B . ii. 233. L. 315, B . 31 1 . and is No . 9 oi

de T .

‘

s esM ples . We find in it the idea conveyed by F. v . 24 :

Ah l make the moflof what we yet may spend ,Beiore we, too , into the Dust descend ;

Dust into Dust . aod under Dust to lie.

Sans Wine , sans Song, sans Singer. and—sans End .

Compare Herrick’

s verse To Sappho , which might also be appended as a

m qq o so ss ns and sr

"Let us now take time and plsy,

Drinkrich wine ; and mahe good cheere .

For once du d. and laid i°

th grave .

No return irom thenee we have."

4330) “h i s!“

orJ"on e fif e"gr

J) ! do“ Jive ! er so» qr

w he n J)“6 °

«r or

Are “A H“w“tr r‘

A) ; u p )“) d m Ag ) Ul<a

JnS AL“ 624

in a lily-like cup I pour rosy wine ,as the violet clouds ’ pour down jessam ine .

75

I drink wine , and every one drinks who like m e is worthy of itmy wine -drinking is but a small thing to H im

God knew, on the Day of Crea tion ,

’ that I should drink wine ;if I do not drink w ine, God

’

s knowledge was ignorance .

76 .

Do no t allow sorrow to embrace thee ,nor an idle grie f to occupy thy days ;

1 . Line3in L reads.“Drink

wine l on the verge ol the vardure and oi tbe fiowing stream .“P. reada

"F0r

B i nomfinu tbese two u adings .‘

77 .

Th is quatrain is C . 165. P. 283. L.

and is the orighn l oi F. v . 59 :

The M and-eeventy jarrt ects ennM e

Tbe aovereign Alchemist that in a trice

1 .

2. ta n -inc.

s M y.“m dflnh“

4 . As to n -831 155 1100132.

I love to have it sd rhe fi slh .

“m u m -” kw “Will cooh hk h n ea orqan ch his i res

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Transcript and Translation 197

a ll 52 a)““M

Jr“bib be rs“M d‘b

M M M w Lo -‘ H‘e x

these three conditions be ing as they should he ; say !‘

who drinks wine if a wise man does no t do so ? 9

79

Drink wine , for thy body becomes atom s in the earth ,1

thine earth , after that , becomes goblets and jars ; ’

be thou heedless of hell and heave n,

why should a wise man be dece ived about such things ?”

80 .

Now is the tim e when by the spring-breezes ‘the world

adorned ,and in hope of rain it opens its eyes

,

“

3. C L . N anti W . f0r " hands Moses-like. so

that bof re tains its commonermeaning.

‘ Th is is line z in the other tes ts .

4 . Wmeans h oth or whit e scum . as well as“the palm of the hand.

"and

in this M S . seems t0 require the f0rmer meaning . Sat qsm .

5. is the breath ofjesns .for in that fresh hreath and verdure th e dead earth is reviving .

"

6. This probahly reiers to what is known in eastern and southern Eum pe

as the "arbre de judée.

"or judas tree, which sudden ly breaks ont in early

spring in an ernpdon of pink or white blossom . like the d mond, rather than the

hawthorn as suggested by Pitsgerald .

81 .

This qnatrain is C . 180 , P. 231 . B . ii. 24 1 . L 367 , B . P. 188. N . 188 ,

appearance as F. ii. 42 in a sligh t ly varied f0rm :

And not a drop that from our Cups we throw

For Earth to drink oflhn t may steal helow

To quench the fire of Angnish in some eye

There hidden—far beneath . and long ago .

In line 4 we get the suggestion ior F. v . 60 . where he describes wine as

The migh ty Mahmud Allah p breathing Lord ,

That all the misbelieving and blackflorde0f Fears and Sorrows that inia t the Soul.

I n F. 1 a note is appended to the eflect that this reiers to M ahmoud the

Gaznavi, who conquered I ndia. which was peopled by swarthy idolaters FitsGerald took the imagery of this quatra in as a whole h'

om a story in M .

m. alu m na).1 . N . and W.

which robs the dis tich of much oi its poetic foroe . I cannot traoe their authority

in the M SS . As to the custom of throwing a little wine upon the earthJike theF. had also beios'e him C . 296

2 .

C] . M . , I . 2342 . (Terminal Essay. p 312 .)3. bad, poetic form , variation of baddc - wine .

82 .

This quatrain is only to be found in the Paris M S . .where it is

and in L . where it was reproduoed as W . 2 1o .

and in the 0pm ing lines of this and q . 74 we find the echo of the opening lines of

R 40 :

As then the Tulip for b es-morning sup

Of I

1 . Compare fli fisThe dewdrops trickle over th e facu of the tulipa

"?

for the cup oi tbe tulip is full ofwine .“

m u d h e ? ) e“g-bx m c fi u fi b e

‘L “éu t l'jJe e- G) ..r‘

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200 Notes

2 . Uterallyflirom the rosehud pleasure comes to me .

V‘it gathers .

83.

Nora.—The first line of83is line ro IW. 2os. the rest ol which is 84 . and via W .

84 W 434 83Th is quatrain is only to he ionnd in this M .S. . whence it became W . 234.

This and 84 m the originals ot F. v . 101 , which varied in all the editions . F. v . ,

howeva . is as good as any. im us

And when lihe her, oh 8aki, you shall pass

And in yourjoyous u rand reach the Spot

Where l md e One—t urn down au emp ty c las .

Th e first two lines come more especially hom q .“34 .

Hare m -le m mecoincidence of two apparenUy connected qn tn im ca niq togethar in a G-in

arrangement.

w e) f l')

Transcript and Translation 20 1

NTss

figpf .

NH W r“

cf“r ‘

M é L-A,‘ ,e “be! ab““N M JW

verily , most pleas ing to me is the rosebud ’

which gathers its skirts close around itse lf !

83.Friends . when ye hold a meeting toge ther,it behoves ye warmly to remem ber your friendwhen ye drink wholesome w ine toge the r,and my turn comes . turn a goblet upside down .

84 .

Friends wben with oonsent ye make a tryu togethet ,

and uke delight in one another‘

s ehm

202 Notes

1 . m hw means nnything

excellence in whieh sense it ie ueed here . S . Roum hns n very intereetingnote upon the hhwry oi thh word u p tfi oi his '°Flowm oi Pa a item tum

"

(London ,

2 . du'

a means here the inm a tion. or u lutntion before drinking . (Cl .Your health l

"and “tonets " in genen l . )

85.

I n th is identicnl iorm th ie quntn in is no t in nny oi the text s under oon

siderntion ; bu t in n more or lw vnried iorm it is c . S . P. tg3.and A quntrnin identknl in sentiment . bu t quite different in exprea ion. is

B . ii. 1 43. L. 389. and N . t gt . and I do not find either oi theee in w .

Compare q . t39

x. C P and L . read this line .

" 0ne Cup is worth a thousnnd men nnd

M . . l . t 7o7 . the value ofan hundred lim ‘“2 . Whe ther the ec ribes who mnde my oopies oi c . and P. erred or not .

I cannot te ll. but they read m ain: cha in““(a thousand) such em pires .

"

Perhnpe the m is interpolnted. Sed qm . it heing in hoth M SS .

3.sweeter thnn wine .

”

This quatrain is P . 20 . B . ii. 350 . B . and W . 256. taken from thisand L . 4 x4. The first line of L . is the seeond oi this . the eecond ot L. heingthe first of this slightly altered .

t . thyself from the bonds of wife and children .” C] .

Geisha ): i rm . ll. 944-956. an nbeolutely identical passage . AlecQur’l n . ch . 64 .

v . 15:"0h ye be lievers ! your ,

wivee end children are nothing but dnugerous

aw a r e) g n u—flu ? ) év w ‘f v fif h efl‘)

w ok tt ) a n n ual flan -M

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2 . L. uses the word saddo im ih l for band Conipare New Testament(M atthew xix . 2 1 . ct persis t ) :

" I i thou wouldst be perfec t . go . se ll that thou hastand give to the poor. and thou shalt have treasure in heaven .

“

87 .

This quatrain is B . ii. 258 . L. 403. S . P . 202, B . 399. N 203+ H id E C 9

t . M e . which means "iree . noble , venerable .

"is often used in poetry to

mean the lily, and also th e cypress . which is quite within the sentimen t oi the

z. a‘éli

‘

m-t -klu‘

ik means equally the earth or the human body . L. and N .

read . "since thou knowes t3. N . reads . that passes in two days .

" One may compare these lineswith the Gulisti n (Introduction)

"The intention of this design was that it should survive .Beca use I see no stability in my existence.

“C] . Vite Nuova . xxiii. : "frale vita

'

l suo durar com'

é leg ion !

88 .

I have no t found this qua train in any of the tex ts under consideration . I t

contains something of the sentiment of F . v . 60 . quo ted sub q . 8r.

Transcript and Tm nsla t‘im: 205

M M e

Jieri fi dd d l g bd ) » j )

fi r.“ 3d h‘91

whatever is , is an h indrance ’on the road for thee ,

how canst thou journey wi th these h indrances — remove them !

87 0

Bring me that ruby in a clear gla ss ,bring me that compan ion and intimate of all exce llent peoplesince thou knowest tha t the duration of th is earthly worldis a wind that qu ickly passes by,’—bring me wrne .

88.

Arise ! bring physic to th is oppressed heart,br ing tha t musk-scented and rose -coloured wine ;

r. Lite rally. “the ingredien ts oi the antidote . I t is interes ting to no te thatStd ngnss defines mulerfib

"a sped es o i eshflu afing medlcine in which m bies am

an ingredlent"; this accords with line 4. and the who le sentiment oi 0mar.

89.

This quatrain is c . 26 1 . P . roe . B . ii. 274 . 210 . B . m . N . 2xx.

and w . 252 . Compare with lt q . 66. and also q . t 4o. I t is the original oi

For in the M arhet-place one Dusk of DayI watch ‘

d the Pot ter thumping his we t clayAnd with its all ob lita ated Tongue

I t murmur'

d : "Gen tly. Brother. gently. pray !F . in his note tells the story told hy the Taj-i-dar in the Mantik-ut -tair oi

Fw d -ud-dln‘At ti r oi the prophe t who iound that the same spring watu that was

sweet in itself became bitter in an earthenware cup . (N . . ll . 2345 To

whom the cup spoke as follows :The Clay that I am made oL once was Man.

Who dylng . and resolved into the same

Obliter'ated Earth . from which he came

Was ior the Potter dug . and chased in turn

Through lnng vicimitude oi Bowl and Urn :

But howsoever,moulded. still the pain

Oi that first mortal Anguish would re tain .

And east m d re-a sh ior a'

l‘

housand years

Would turn the swe etest Water into Tears .

Fitzgerald’

s Translation, L R . . vo l. ii . . p . 467 .

r N . ior “iresh L reads pdm h’ u a

2. Vil e note 3. q . 66 .

3. L. for we ll reads gcfdm’

a reverent ly .

90 .

I find this quatrain only in P . 266 . S. P. 396 . and N . 196. which are identical

with it .

(‘l 033(‘l 1b“0)

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208 Notes

This quatrain is C . 260 . B . ii. 275. L. 4 10 . S . P . 199. B . 406 . N . m andW4 44 . All varymore or less . In L . lines 2 and 4 are transposed . C/. Qur‘

i n

ii . 172 :“There is no pie ty in turning your faces to the east or west . but he is

1 . The m nat are the‘

l'

raditions of M uhammad supplementing theQur’

in ,

and held in almos t equal reverence .

2 . The firrlrdt are the ordinances of c od . Therefore the sword fis h/t .t

wh ich in the oth er tex ts takes the p laoe of the objentive rt is pleonastie N . reads

3. Literally. mouthful. is . share your goods with others .

4 . C . reads ."and

do not amict b'our) fe llow-m ortals .

”

make designs upon the life or property ofanyone .

"

5. W . for dar‘uhda reads hm wa

'

do .‘a synonym implying obligation .

6 . Compare P.N . chap . 55:“Ofier to the poor. oh my son. a portion of

what thou possesses t . whe ther thy possessions be small orgreat ."

92.

I do not find this u in L S . P. , N . . or W . . but it is B . ii.

identica lly .

1 . magu exprmses doubt . and answers to the phrase “q .

2 . the Cup .

fi l ls-Jen s ) ” M oe’

w f w i m 5 (‘l

W u fi y s g-‘ ef flm Jfi ‘f‘w

n‘d - e wl

Transcript and Translation 209

su sos h e s )“d w w

fie ?“it p“alte

it burns l ike fire , butit makes l ike the water of l ife—drink !

91 .

Follow not the Traditions,1 and leave alone the Commands,wi thhold not from anyone the morse l ' that thou possessest : 8

ne ither slander, nor afflict the heart of anyone ,‘I guarantee you 5 the world beyond—bring wine !

92 .

W ine is rose -red , and the c up is filled with the water of roses .—maybe ,‘

in th e crystal casket“is a pure ruby,—maybe ,

2 10 Notes

93°

Thh d ao l do not find in the texts under consida afinm with the eacepI t contains the t m of F. v . 93-4 z

Indeed the ldols I have loved so longHave done my credit in th is World mucb wrongHave drown’d my G lory in a shallow Cup .

And sold my reputation for a Song.

Indeed . indeed, Repen tance oft before

I swore—bu t was l soberwhen l swore ?

1 . Compare H ifix :" Let us breah again ourvows of repentance in the mids t

of the roses .

“l And also the passage which occurs in his first ode : “All myactiona th e out come oi my desire to u tifiy myyaam inga have dragged me dowu

to an evil reputation ."

94 .

This quatrain is C . 280 . P. 31 . B . ii. 291 . L 443. 8 . P . 230 . B . 439. N . 231 .W . 27o . and is No . 27 ot

'

E . C .

'

s specimens . I t is the original ofF. v . 69 :

B ut helpless Pieces of the Garne He plays

Upon thls Chequer-board ofNigh ts and Daysmtherm d thither mom and checha and slays .

And one by one back in the Close t lays .

The firs t two linu in P. i. 49 rend

‘

Tis all a Chequer-board ofNights and DaysWhere Des tiny with M en ior Pieces plays .

In all the other teats under consideration . exeep t th e Paris M S. and B . ii . .

the first two linm m transposed . Vidc no te to q . 108. post .

1 . Literally. " I n the manna of truth. and not in

me taphor.

”

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212 Notes

95.

This quatrain is P.39. B. ii. 292 . L. P . 215. B . 426 . N . 216 . and W . 237 .

Together wit h q . 54 (g . v . 71 and 98 :

M oves on : nor all your Pie ty norWitShall lure it baekto cancel halfa li ne .

Nor all your‘

l‘

ears wash ou t aWord of it .

Would but some winged Ansel . ere too late.

Arrest the yet uniolded Ro ll of I-‘

ate .

And make the stern Recorder otherwise

Enregistermrquite oblita ate !

1 . P N and W . read ,“Why grieve so mneh abou t this pro trac ted

affliction “! B . ii . presents a sligh t varlant m ponnded of both readings .

2. W . tion“

3. Vil e note 1 . q . 15. a n.

4 . come back .

96 .

1 . li terally.“a veil of clond,

2 .

“f i’l

Transcript and Translation 2 13

-&D JM M )

N ; g) a ) ! o r is s u e

a d ) it) ) lv ' Lab“! be’

>L4 ~Nu fl260 pb 4=b ov

s

in“ r! J‘s”) r

b u t M b“Jar H4) 35

played together in a baby-game upon the chessboardof existence,

and one by one we return to the box of non-ex istence .

95

Oh , heart ! since in th is world truth i tse lf is hyperbole ,why art thou so disquieted with this trouble and abasement ? ‘

resign thy body to dest iny, and adapt thyse lf to the times,’

for, what the Pen has written ,

’ it wi ll not re -write for thy sake.

‘

96

Ou the face of the rose there is still a cloud -shadow)in my natu re and heart ’ there is st ill a des ire for wine ;

214 Notes

3. L . reeds “time ” for ‘°

plaee" "What time is this for sleep ?

Vida: q . 97. note 2 .

4 . p 1.

5.

I t ls mom ing. ob Siki. fiIl the cup wlth v lne .

The Sun of wm flm fm the m t w p .

and W 3670 E d In the M th e we find th e 1x.

1 is it not ? that of the myrifi s who

I .

“To M W dw t “mu k a bi t tynfii 'mgo ss

eontemp t . or h r counting m nothing .

2 . Du ly. "Tum ls tim (or place) ye t for. etc .

C . reads m aM ‘a-swabs!”mm . and N .

‘afiw .

“

W idm !or o"

;”

. r . JI

4 . B . ii. . N .

flf'

w fi dfi ) ¢

of w fll wh w fi x f

wi th ? ) fir

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9 .

Th“quatrain 3C. 376 . P . 346 , B. ll . p r, L. S. P. n o. B . 431 . N .

mm to

Thu to the Lip ofM pom

I lel n ‘d th e i

'

fiaf ofmy Uh to lm n ;

Ad d u p to Lip it mum m‘d. M lle you five ,

Drink ! for. m du d. you m sN retm-n .

z. Literally. the m mm : of low fife .

33

3LN a“) “n“.v—‘J MA

Jl—‘Jc

‘i H N ) H M

.y-d Db M l 6M a? is )“

bbd 60; us)“.f‘fi fl“

to“;

31 M v b: -J

take two fragran t aloe logs, and brighten the assembly,make one into a lute , and burn the other .

99.

We have returned to our wonted debauch ,we have renounced —the Five Praye rs !wherever the goblet is, there thou mayst see us,our necks stretched out”l ike that of the bottle .

100 .

I n great des ire ‘ I pressed my lips to the lip of the jar,to enquire from it how long l ife m ight be attained ; ’

217

218 Notes

Uterafly.

"m d n id in secret . B. th u d L . rend this line .

language it told me this secret .” F . reada

The cup n id to me in mystlc h nguage .

4 . Compare Gulisti n . ch . L. story 9.

I spen t my life in precious hopes . s les l

That every ded re ofmy hu rt will be fulfilled

Mywishu were reallsed. but to what profit ? dnce

There is no hope that my p‘st lifie will retum .‘

301 .

and w . 280. I t contains the sentimm t of the shortnm ol life m d dm tion of

eternity which signal“many ofFJs fines t vem s . (CI . M . . ch . xx vil. ) P . x7x

repeats this ruba ’

i with veryflight verbal change1 . L. reads "days for hours .

"

3. Compare P.N . . ch . lxxi. . and do Saey'o notes upon it.

This quatrain is C . sot . P. m . S . P . a t . B . 450 . R 243.

And if the Wine you drint e Lip you press .

End in what All begins nnd ends ln—Yes :You wen —To-morrow you shall not be lm .

l t will be observed that the original form of this verse was much clom to the

End ln the Nothing all things eud in—yes

Then h ncywhile Thou u h Thou art bu t what

x. C . for “wine “reads " love .” and B . ii. and L . for“with wine read

full of wine )“3. The familiarmo "2M . L and N . m d ° 'wlth a smooth-checked

C . rends “fresh

” w dk ekfi e“?

fi- w kw flwx s‘flwivb rgt

' u -i‘k doy w- k

M N M Mr

-"M e w

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3. C . m ds thfis line.“8 lnoe in this world of nothm e- you must p ss

tion .” B . d reads : "Do no t elumber thus . for tbon wilt be notfi ng to

marrow.

“Compere lines 3m d q of q. r50 . which are ehnast idenficel.

to3.This quatn in h c so x. P. roz.

243. W . 483. d 1 1 26. I t gave to F. three vm es of the section. ce lled in

M unda m er ofdepu ting m y

Slunkhunger—etnchen Ram ri u m y.

Once mom within the BoM'

s house elone

l sM surrounded by the Shepes ofCh y:

Shepes ofaflSorts m d Sim greet u d sme ll.

Thu stood along the floorm d by the wfll :

Lh ten‘

i pa h pe bu t never tnlked at nll .

Whera t some one of the b quacious lot

l thinke Sfifi pipHn—wu ing hot

"All this ofPo t and Potter—Tell me . then .

r. B . ii. . L . and N . read this line .“Every one of them u id to me in

1“I do nm find this qm ufin in m y ofme texts undu oonfid ew epfing

x. Here we have a pleynpon the words rall a wine m d ri zt a flhe iocorporedspirit . the breath of God. the Qur'an . N . . Revelation (Steingm ). Paris MS .

z. Compare q . 7. note z.

“w ob fi w b wflfi

Transcript and Translation

rs”; w ) K f l we

Ji ll ,f yfi “Se sag—Q6 ) Kl l

Jué p”) vb —Sbb -g ) 4

ar e ) it} ) ‘P ) JH“w» m i 1 ! abr‘ 6 ‘5

or»: f ») f) r

s sf

M l» sS‘ a s“cl) 5 cv e

‘)

um ”! e“s ob- e J4 ,us

since the end of all th ings is that thou wi lt be na ught ; °

whilst thou art , imagine that thou art not ,—be happy !

103.I wen t last night in to the workshop of a potter,I saw two thousand pots, some speaking, and some s ilent ;suddenly one of the pots cried out aggress ive ly ‘

.

Where are the pot maker, and the pot buyer, and the

se ller ?104 .

Of this spirit, that they call pure wine ,l

they say It is a remedy for a ru ined heart

22 !

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224 Notes

1 . The other texts rewd the last word m - “my h-iend . (B. it ru ds“m u

a. In which w e kicfigirh should be reedered “no dull persou .

107 .

This que train is c . 312. 8 . ii.34x. L 439. and I t contains

the w fiment the t eppenrs in many ofF.

‘

s queu-t ins . but 00where more strongly

than in F . v . 54 :

Waste not your Hour. nor in the vain purm it

Better be jocund with tbe fruitful c rwp e.Then a ddm afier nm or bitter I-

‘

m it .

Llfe is in tbe

heeplng ofa single bru tb .

1 . M in Pers ian dogma ls eternityas oppmed to M eternity without end . i t .

“to d l eternity.

”

108 .

SOL N .

Fw in m d ouh ebovq ebouu below.

‘Tis nothing but e lh gic Shadow-chow .

Ph y‘

d in n Bow oeeQndle is the Sun

Round which we Ph nmm t ures come m d go .

OfMeglc Shndow—ehep a the t come m d go .

Round with tbe Sun' illumin'

d h nm hd d

In mdnlgh t by the hl u ter oflhe Show :md it is coup led with F. v . fin flb q. 94. L 7. as t0 th e m lt ot

M u d the uwy d Ayu a n fis-M . from which l’ . w0h “the idee of"

hh veu e. F. .v 70 .

r. is l thinkwoo free.

z. Tha c h uterns u e of verylng shapes . “M a fi m a kmfi e

of tv o copper befins m ted by e shede d n n d cd h o ebout e m d higb .

Tbe b wer one conn im the n ndh m d the upper one hu e hm dle for the m d

the ferrh h who cerries it . The sh ede is folded like the h nfilh r“0hi0u e h nm “Orm ments m puineed on the d otha nd tt is to the M d the-e u themshifts it fmm one hnnd to enother that Ow refu x The d itor of the Cd a d e

m w a m u m m a a c u m :“Tha c h e thorm m vu y

common in Ce leutn‘

l‘

hey are mnde ot a tall eyfindc . v ith igm 0f men

M M cut out of peper and pu nd m it . The cytindc . whieh h vu y h h t .a m m m m mm d v hb h it fi y tm A hole ls m t e et r the

m m tb p rt cmm h fimed u m w e m the cylindera o s to h ru a

vu e . Whm e m flh mp a e-ndle is ph oed ind dg e cerm t d fir h wm m m m m m

w p m ’ fi —fi ‘t fi b fl tfi ' m

3. E. C . en ct ly conveys the meaning z"The sun is the candle . the w0rld

4. repeating the has’

raaiu of

ofweertness on the pert of the acribe in the verse ln my coples . Sad qm .

‘09'

Thls que tn in is C . 331 . 8 . ii. 365. L. 503. S . P . 381 . B . 499. N . 28a.

and doee not vary.

q

quatrain F. v . 81 . which hn beflled eo many commente tou-s

0h Th0u . who M en 0f bu er Eerth didst make .

And ev'

n with Paredise devb e the Sneke

For eil the Sin wherewith the Fece ofM an

I s blacken'

d—Man'

s forgiveness glyc—end take !(Vida. however. note 3to q . 1 . m ; and s] . M . . ll . 3229-3253. and the pem ge

beginning at h zas. no n h u m a n-309 )

This quetrl ln l do not find ln m y of the texts under considm tion.

1 .

'

am kom a ie "to mfi e intw tion .

a. nab. hm end elm here in this p0m . meens pure in the sense of beingundiluted. "3. The zap ”lam . or common Syrian jujube -tree I ts fruit is made in to

sweetmu ts . and it s juice is uwd for coughs . bu t the British jujube-losenge takes

nothing from it but its name

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4 li terally . m is sing exuberance .

Thls quem ln is C 356. 372 . L. 554 . S . P . 276 .

and W. 3ao .

z. L. . N -s .

3. M menns nlso “e ternity. C . reeds jim .’ “ln the body .

4 . etc '

The first line euggests F. v . 48 :“A moment’s halt . e momentnry taste

of Being etc .

1 . Compare m m . e halting-

ph oe . and m kim. which adgnifies e more

permanent nbode .

a . Literally. food is painful3. L . f0r sdkt reeds rn i—wine .

handwriting. (Bih llotheque Nationa le . Paris .)

(‘l .r “F r.» (i )

Transcript and Translation 229

.5'

‘

gf-fiv ‘ bu t-atJr“3” d ‘

pa5

,is fi le H) s”) x

as for th is meddl ing ‘ intel lect , a fist -fu ll of winewi ll I throw in its face , to make it s leep .

1 1 1 .

How long shal l we cont inue s laves to every-day problem s ?‘

what matter whether we l ive one ’ year, or one day, in th is worldpour out a cup of wine ,‘ before that webecome pots in the workshop of th e potters .

1 1 2 .

Since our abode in this monaste ry is no t permanent ‘

w ithout the C up -bearer and the be loved ,’ it is pa infu l to supportl ife ; ’

4 . N . translates "of the creation or eternity (end) of the world .

’

5. C . . B . ii. . L . . and N . reed word 6satin ) simpleton .

1 13.

This quatrain is C .372. P. 147. B . ii. 38 1 . L. 514 . S . P . 286 . B . 509. N . 287.

and W . 327 .

1 . service is frangh t with reproach“. L . for s¢dd reads rr=

from "; u . . on account 0f (sins l incur reproaches).

2 .

3. i.e. .

" I f life and thy eeverityare faithfnl to one anotha . (" I f thyeeverity

continueo ell my life“—u /¢ lurm - to perb rm n promise .)

4 . N . reads km u an

Iatter is more probebly correct . C . for (M ).

5. B . ii for"please God

t u

B . ii. 380. L 522. S. P. 288.

and w . 329 . We find egnin an echo of F. v . 94 in th is que train which expreseee

1 . Uten lly.

"science cr d0ctrine A synonym of

‘

iin .‘in conjunction stith

which it occurs h 'equently in Persian .

2 . li terallyn flonly prectise the d ence of. etc . The other texts tor ri i

n um ber.“etc .

P ? ) Jr ? ) w er e)

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3. L reeds this line in difieren t words : “They say. God will grant thee

B . ii. has a comhination ot the two reedings

4 . Compare 9 . 64 . W 4 .

1 15.

This quatrain is C . 374 . P . 340 . B . ii . 382 . L. 532 . B . 527. S . P . 284 . N . 285.

and W . 325.

1 . ”ya: means here “with humility. fawning .

" N . reads it to mean .

Though I come to the mosque from a sense of

2 . P L . . N and W . begin hakka’

3. The other texts read the stronger form .

" I s tole .

” ior this . whichequals “I abstrac ted (literally. nu de less ) .

4 . The W i le the M us lim prayer-mat upon which the ”flatt ' or cere

menial prostration is periormed .

6 . ii . . to steel othe r.

1 16.

Th is que train is c . 345. P . 227 . B . ii. 385. L 539. S . P . 289. N . 290 .

and W . 330.

Well."murmur'd one . Le t whoso make or buy.My Clay with long Oblivion is gcne dry :

But fill me with the old familiar jnice.Me thinks I migh t recover by-ando hy.

"

There is a quatrain in the tex ts N .

identical meaning. though the phraseology is much varied .

1 . N . and W . read this line ." I n the hand of des tiny l become like a bird

‘

s

C . reads “And by the hand o t deetiny l am rooted upfl'

Transcript and Trans lation 233

w h ats-flw »

34 h ]; Lo tt i

r)“N ews“e

a rsJs ‘ss‘tfl

0 ° “45flre p -ic

‘

at

they say to me May God grant thee penitence .

"

H e h imse lf does not give it, and if H e gives it, I will none of it .‘

1 15.

Although I have come with an air of supplication ‘to the mosque ,by Allah l ’ I have no t come to pray ;I cam e one day and stole“a prayer-mat ‘

that sin“wears out , and I come again and again .

“1 16 .

When I am abased beneath the foo t of destinyand am rooted up from the hope of life ,‘

234. Notes

a. K a d w. nu l “l h y it be th t v ith the perfnme cl the v ine l meyre v ive

for e man-inc" C res ts “50 |0ng as it ia h1n0f the pa fnme 0t v ine l may

th h thm h h h fll m yi ve ."

ac h e .

in it an c b c . v . 7 2.

u t Qt . “fl

-gt h B . fi . M . L . 571 . S. P. ”3. B.m N . m M W. 3330M b

In an we have eehca d F . v . 93-5. and ab of P. v . 4 1 . which

Pa p lext no more with lrinman or b ivine .

And ia e your finm in th trm of

1 . in"“inhale the tun a of. literally. "m ike .

M u i m m r x fi r fli)

a,» CF ' f u t ) m» wk) 6‘ w .

M r gfl-‘M en erwr‘ flfi efls w w s rm (

7)“M p ph ex

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2 . in Le t us cease to strive to earn sa lvation. Literally. Le t us withdraw ourhands from our long hope .

3. Literally . the "skirt . or fringe . of the lute .

1 19.

Th is is also . as faras l have iound . only in this M S. We recognise the senti

ment ofF. v. 1 1 and 1 2 . I t is N0 . 14 0fE . C .

’

s examp lea

1 . cj .

"We have renounced the pomps and vanities of the world.

2 . in .

"at the price of.

" C] . M . . 1. 2599.

"Does one boy poverty ?(Adhem ) replied : I for one chose it voluntarily . and I bought it at the price of

the kingdom of the world ." etc . etc .’

3. Chap . 77 0ffP.N . is a periect reflection oi this

ruba ‘

i. De Sacy in his notes (p . 304) quotes an Arabic quatrain which may be

trans lated : "Poverty is substance : everything outside poverty is but an

accident z poverty is health ; everything ou tside poverty is but malady . The

whole world is bu t illusion and falsity ; poverty alone in all the world is an

excellent possession and real wealth .

"

820 .

This quatrain is P . 265. B . ii. 409. L. 523. S . P . 299. B . 518. N . 300. and W .

336. 3nd it is the original 0fF. v . 56 :

For " I s "and I s nor. though with Rule and LineAnd "Ur-AND-nown by Logic I define .

Ofall that one should care to fathom . l

Was never deep in anything bu t—Wine .which is a great improvement upon P . i. 4 1 . its original form . The quatrain is ofcourse a sneer at bis own algebraical and astronounical studie s . C] . Dante . Riuu

C . xviii. : "Ah com’

poca difesa mostra signore a cui servo sormonta l

1 . adioir is “esoteric .

"as appoeed to hatin.

“esoteric . in line 2 .

2 . N . reads . “all that is powerfully exalted .

" l

4“we 0“

est-m s 0} 0

4

HM fl tr-‘b d ‘n w flflfleh t sfiflu‘ w

Transcript and Translation 237

”as ”J’ s ”a Ja l ) l w e

le t us cease to strive after what has long been our hope ,’

and play w ith long ringle ts and the handle ' of the lute .

1 19.

We have preferred a corner and two loaves to the world ,and we have put away greed of its estate and magnificence ;

‘

we have bought poverty with our’ heart and soul

in pove rty we have disce rned great riches .

8

1 20 .

I know the ou twardnes s ‘ of existence and of non -ex istence ,I know the inwardness of all that is h igh and low ; ’

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4 .

5The mu ning of the line is oh enre . W . appm ds tbe noee.

a bundred years hence."l should lihe to eender w here by th e cm

“M

"or tbe Fr-ench ‘w k m m r

'

Tbere is no good Bngliah

equivah nt zin q . 2 l have rendered it “an Thou v ilt .

123.

W . 368. and is practically invariable.

1 . The m d ru h dw nsed w dflm u tbe t vM acca xfing to tbe

popular readiu of his pbiioeophy. m 0mar‘

s pet detestation .

san e . Wh a m” .

3. rM means “a day’

s allom ce 0f iood.

4.

5.

6 . rig h t . Thele is a a t id l proverb akin to this : “Be a robber. & a

M but do not pe t conscience fi de .

"

1 . Literally. “th is salt -man h.

“

Literally. “co m m un a l.“C u ds tbe liee.“M agoey of

h eart and sonl." B . B ho pru fia ny th e sam m

w et“) cL r t ? )

Transcript and Translation 24 1

“5 ” if“H git-9 44) 4 ‘s}we

éb f i gs

'lf i') u

n i; J) d M ‘sflfh

as

S5” wil l) “06 .

gel) ” U

e h em h w ai r‘b

evfi ) ?

since the good and the bad of the world wi ll come to an end ;‘

what matte r, since it m ust end ? an thou w ilt . be all pa in . or,an thou wi lt, all remedy .

“1 23.

So far as in thee l ies, follow the example of the profiigate ,‘

destroy the foundat ions of prayer ’ and fast inghear thou the Word of Truth from Omar Khayyam ,

‘

“Drin k wine , rob on the h ighway,“and“be benevolent .1 24 .

Since the harves t for the human race , in this w ildernes s ,‘

is naught but to suffer affl ict ion o r to give up the ghos t.“

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3. Compare P. i 37. quoted sub q . 20 . L. reads this line . Seek not toleave yes terday alone ." e tc .

‘

Were empty as the W ow ofone’

s Hand .

2 , P , “d L . read N m yM .

6

128 .

is C . 393. B . ii . 455. L. 588 . S . P. 34 1 . B . 581 . and

aecia -e l fl i') $45 0) od ifi d l- b f f‘)

w W “'M ev u

Tm ast ripl and Translation 345

a‘fi n’ e

d)» t sfl

as ) » em ) a»: d ub a

wr ap"r“‘fi u 'J“o

‘r fi’

as far as thou art able live for thyse lf for one moment .look not for to-morrow, seek not ye sterday, behold the present l

1 27 .

To drink wine and consort with a company ‘ of the beaut iful”

is be tter than practising the hypocrisy' of the zealot ;‘

if the lover and the drunkard are doomed to he ll ,“then no one will see the face of heaven .

”

1 28.

One cannot consume one ’s happy heart with sorrow,

nor consum e the pleasure of one ’s life upon the touchstone ;

246 Notes

2. to

! t o ” !

h w a m ~a e

3. —a d h s-fi fic u y b

M M B C Qm R i fl L m 3R m 36d N . g A W . mn d fi C L aad -om ia fi tb m d flm u

And n fln t m m ke u ry h th mM fl fl m w h m hOnn dm n u u w fi ew d mm a M —h h ?

L C hg h fl M W d M “W -h fin b h m '

m

3. - . M d

p ointa ‘ B . ii. -fl L ra d h g'wn q fi p fi t “C n h tk

fiu ' h -i n imd L m fi :

n dfl fi u y q d d u fi

Wat ! M h t th ”W h a t s -y in. “Pm by. 0 M ! w i th “

M M h C m P. fi R l fi L fi g S Pn u l B .“at ” .

andw . m . n d m’

1 . Th

x m u h-fl m a m

am m o M y ? ) “fl fi flb d ‘ fl y w dfi - ‘t fl 75 3—1

d r t-“fi e w x h fl J-i “Ju an a—5 “f " s flf y e

n w u e w -n

h G ‘y h —v e fl‘e

a fi ’ m qfie a‘

v“w h r fi flfi ) 3fl d a i fl

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li terally. " so m y delicnte hm ds and feet .

3 The othu tu tflm p t - . wm 3fln fia nm d thkfig' m

131 .

q ain is C . “3.I t h fi tt c e m d inqfi u im d l- t .

1 . M ‘s i n u m d lfi y.

z.

3. Fa m ' wfle L tu ds ' w fl flfl a m ; hi

ren ds“W d h t

”

n d C u n ds’

d n-t.‘ i t ,

“s m eh blond s ym canf

'

,

13:

fi n d

W m u d does not m y . M in d a n d x .

‘

s tru flmim m m mm

(9 “i (z) 3F) a“! Je t fi (1 )

1 . m a n te l . m m m m a fhe m b - h th m‘

ch . q m l m ‘H WVh a h h s fi t -k a Efie d th ' h h -i fi p t

fi l m -u fi “

W-m

1 .

W . M E a ¢i- bya ¢ zibe.

M y. W .

“

3m u m rd tfi s h g“fi d n fiu tb h d d lé b i a

w h ic h "

4 . M M v H- u m m tfi n h m d h ”mM flm ° m l h d d m w n fl fl h u d

the -od d“M Wi m fi th - "M SGB

' Th a n hn n n

b q fl mm -fi m w mm “t h a n .“fi t m t p m t d i w m h a m m d h“h a s h en n a -m afi a :“Th y h y cfi n b w - fly. ‘

M m h m -fi k tfi rM JM M a d md fi h ofi a m cfl h nflm d p fi q fl vfi y

fi

5 Tub -a n“ea fi

ha th M o w . 1he v u ld h q pnl d to m Al u m s

fl a m w u m d m Fflt fiQi-l ah l fi qk fip .

41m

m m S e w n“B . i ifi . L 657. S- P. fi x h flg. x fia d W . 4d . and fion tfi l

M M M n h n-l fi .

m m m M u t p—h n

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252 Notes

1 . u . . Wine hes bem mured from the bot tle into the cup . Blood ig tn

Pa ten h teratum a synonym ot hatred. and in composition“kh n efiu a lm 'km

“is to revenge enese lf.

135.

This quatrain is B . ii. 483. L. 671 . S . P. 366 . B . 663. N . 370 . and W . 4 14. andwe find in it the souroe of the first distich of F. v . 9

Each M orn a thousand R oaes bringx you say

Yes . but where leaves the Rose of Yes terday ?F. i. 8 is cloeer to the originnl :

And look—e thousand B lossoms with the DayWoke—e nd a thousand scat ter

‘d into Clay ;

and also F. v . 14 :

Look to the blowing Rose about na—“Lo .

Laughing ." she enys . " into the world I blow .

At once the silkeh tassel of my l’urse

Tear. and its Treasure on the Gerden throw .

1 . the peta ls . N . trans lates apt ly but freely. "See how the zephyrhas caused the roses to open .

which the fo llowing occurs :“Since the zephyr has brought to the rose the

perfume of thy fame she has torn th e akirt ofp urp le which was her glory.

"7

2 . The amours of the Nightingale and the Rose oocnr redundant ly tn all

Persian liten ture . Vido note to q . 67 . A volume migh t be filled with such quota

tions ztwo will snfi ee here—o ne from Sa'

adi

The Spring is delightful . oh Rose . where hast thou been ?Dost thou no t hear the lamentations of the l‘l igh tingalee onw count of thydeh y? !

and one from jali l-ud-dtn in the Rup bahir

Wh ile the hligh tlngale dngn thy pralses with a loud voloe

I am all ear. like the Rose- tree !

3. B . ii L reads the line

Make haste ! drink wine . for oh how many roses (there m ) that . by the

wind .

”

4 . been scattered to

earth ." L reeds "have been scattered to earth and have become dust ."

Cf. I an/m o . iii . 1 12 :"si levan le foglie l

'

una apprw o dell’

altn . lnfin che 'l remorende alla terra tutte le sue spoglle .

"

136 .

This quatrain is C . 504 and B . ii. 484 ending inyoJ’. C . 427 .

726 . N . 366. and W . 4 1 1 ; it does not vnry. and it is the origixn l of

one of th e quatrains that occur only ln

Were it not fo lly. spider- like to spin

What t for ourse lves . who hnow no t if we shnll

Breathe ou t the very Breath we now bree the in l

W J‘JW fi M U)

a y e) as y q y m w v) J‘ a t fie“1& 3, l

w e ef x sf m ‘v ‘e “Wer e - 4934” (U

Transcript and Translation 253

i t} ! P M ) M .3: -9 4 ) 4

“an ”hy g d) —J) ;

5M .‘Jhs h) w ) ”9 fi le. ) u

AWr)“ w)“r" d )

68

choose thou the manner of fri endship of the goblet and the jar,they are l ip to l ip, and blood has fallen between them .

‘

135.

See , the skirt ‘ of the rose has been torn by the breeze ,the n ightingale rejoices in the bea uty of the rose ; ’

sit in the shade of the rose . for, by the wind, many roses ‘

have been scattered to earth and have become dust . ‘

136 .

How long shall I grieve abou t wha t I have or have not ,

and whether I shall pass th is life light -heartedly or no t ?

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256 Nates

2 . The other texts h ith the exeep tion of a iij reed“heir."wh ieh is e e t

ro p ed

3, they m he thy head into a jsr. R ea ds “B elemtheymahe thy head t nd dast into jan .

“4 .

thou ! "

0 9

This quatraln is R uQS S g L L G-rgm s t n m h flmn fia d

does not vary. Compn e q. 85. and vtdc the m to that qmm

1 . M y.

”Frem whatever is not v ine la the rm d od be best“

a M i a m the six th lfing of the Pfi sh -dadim dm d m rmH e n s th e son ofAhten .“m elen ted to the thrm e by the m ef the

hereie blad smit h liaflor xan mmm'

the m thm v of the tyu nt m

3 W m u m d m m cb cm Gym ).He m ideatical with Cym the M ede of GreekMstery. m d m th moet hrfl~lim d aflthe fim d the w m dym y. He eenqnerfll n d kined mu tended the kiu dou d n to Syrh Afi mm r. n n yp t . and be

m a m of oed dee tal hh ta y by hh em qau t d m m d m

fi tion : M 1839 : ”u nfln d fi r M R MM‘

s“Ge- d

Sketch of the fih tory ofk sh"M 1374).

W m m :“When Hifi ism ku rhy shol ld b valu n am d

M ey the fi fin s oa d Kfi ?"

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254

t . M c M ah vfi z“Life h in the hu lfig efa sh gh brm h

Vw m wm toy.

W4 12.

m m m w m m m mHm m u fima aou d erm h

2. fi n d WJe

3.

a. M a k h l d th n m d m s a x .

"W ‘fl a d I . read : W " C] . m

0 1

1 . M .

‘ h y l um u ide‘

N . ad w . r- d fi fi e.' b ne t

u fi m w fl ‘

m ‘ P.- l l . fu " - t"“fl y.

“M m m w u dn d tfi s u -fi h d y m b

m a n - fl 4 1- 6 st e mM 0 “fi r e -r ifle» -y

Transcript and Translation 255

wo lv d a-Wou é x

rfltfl e‘ré m‘

“m y A) ; b ék) ) afi w

Fill np the wine -c up . for l do not know

that I M bm tbe out this bra th ths t I

rem ind ns’ m t d m w

' fa thoee who have pas d m y,

h u m m and a n m t thy life to dn ww

133»“m m pfl ifly m do oe t én ep'

M M M M m fl m m -fia dru k:

262 Notes

2. la thethe h st two lines varymuch z

“The world is a grlevous detrlment for those who

tnhnb lt lt : renounce this detrlutent zmd everything becomes prvofiteble tut-you .

" l

t 4so

Thh quatrain ls C . 447. P . 1 1 1 . B . ii. 523. P. 389. B . 697 . N . 394 .I t is the m'lginal ofF. v . 44

Why . if the Soul ean fling the Dust aside,Were

'

t no t a Shnme —were ‘

t not a Shame for him

In this C lay carcu e crippled to ahide?

This qnatratn ofF. made its first appearance in the poem pmperas R ii. 49. tn he

torm in which it eppu red tn the Prefaoe to FJ

Oh fi my Soul a n fiing his Dnst aside .

And naked on the air of l-I eaven ride .

ls‘

t no t a Shame—is ’

t not a Shame for H‘

nn

So long in th ls Clay Suhurb to abtde ?

C}. M 11. 126-7 :“The eoul

'

s port ion was e levation . and the body's term trial

dq n dafion ; a mlx ture ofvile earth and pure splrtt was formed'“

1 . C . and N . read " grid s “for " dust ." and for "body '

8 . ii . and

I. use the commoner word "m ."

2 . li terally . thou becames t upon the ha vens .

3. t .r. . The heavenly sphere in general .4 . C . uses the words thou adorned .

"

5. is better. The

Th ls qu train is C . 4Bo .

and w . 44e. l t is m other o f the quatrains ln whlch the idea recnrs of the

dm ed d ay or jug werning its oon temner of the tn nsient nt ture of hum llfe .

1 . li teral ly . “I was heado ln ppy. The other texts rend. “I was drunk.

”

2 . asbasb signifies the mob. the eommon herd .

the re cklees h eakmy hean wa s glsd."whlch is smmd y h ee for eo consd endous

s echo lu

w or h f eb -fi} ;

far -h ar e) M P) o

f ? ) r‘ l’)

l h dr o u -t fl‘“eflv “fi d yw w o

‘r

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264 Nates

30 4 . V“,m . N33“!147 .

l find this quatrain only in P. 263. and iu a varied form as L 722 (B .

l t is a mat ter for comment that so careful and diserlminating a oollator as w .

shou ld have omitted eo charac teristic a quatu in .

1 . Literally. hold up .

" L. realist bar g r.‘

2 . Literally . heart ‘eeelring. or heart -desired3. This dup licated adm b is a common form ofPersian superlative .

4 . The aeeond and third linee in L . read :

"Cheerfully see lr the verdant spot and the bankof the atream .

For this vault ofheaven ou t of the moon-like face s of ido ls ."etc .

’

148 .

This quatrain is B . ii. 546. M i3W . 432 . taken trom thia In a variau t

I t oontains the inqfiration for k v t o :

Oh Thou . who didst with pitfall and with ginBeset the Road as to wander in.

Thou wil t not with Predes tined Evil roundS nmesh . and then immte my Fall to Sin 1

A very similar passage occurs in the Mesnevi ofJelli l-ud-din Rumi (book 1 .ch . vi ). in the s tory of the Caliph Omar and th e Ambassador. which elaboratesthis theory of predestination :

Tha t same Des tiny. though it should an hundred times waylay theeWill (one day) s trike a pavilion for thee in the highest vault of ha ven !

W . 432 (edition 1883) was retained as No . 241 in his edition of 1893; but itappears to have talren the place of one hlo au in his original edition ot 1882 .

Thou dost with frequent snare beeet the way.The Pilgrim '

s wandering footsteps to betray.And all poor wret ches tangled in thy snares

Dou seize as prisoners and as rebels elay.

Th is edition gives no original text . but this verse is a good parallel to R'

s

quatrain. and is so quoted by D .

1 . N . reads this line ."0n every side thou hast plaeed two hundred

m m ‘

2. N . and W . read . I t is yonr lou if. etc .

‘

ear-v—‘JWh -‘ w r'fl (i ) n‘fi l

‘)

w b e‘fi u vr i éx w‘

“i fl“b f‘fl

flaw

Transcript and Translation 265

w “a“gs

”J‘“ or “

fi h w m fi fi fli m w

s5i fl“ al t.“N ) !

e» a—b at»a; we w e w a

xv“? b e 6 by? mu m 4

“re fit“

w rid J;

the cup said to me in mystic language ,’“I was l ike thee . and thou also wilt be l ike me .

147 .

Grasp ‘ the wine -cup and the hagon . O heart ’s des ire ! ‘

pleasantly. pleasantly .' and cheerfully, wander in the gardenby the river brink ;

many are the exce llent folk whom mal icious heave nhas made a hundred times into cups, and a hundred t imes into

fiagons .

1 48 .

I n a thousand places on the road I walk. Thou p lace st snares.‘Thou sayest . “I will catch thee ' if thou p laces t step in them

1 66 Notes

3. Literally . " Not one sp eckot'

the world is lree irom thy wisdom .

4 . N . reeds these two lines :

Thou catchest . and slayes t . and callest a siuner.l

149.

This quatrain is S . P . 408. it is No . 13of E . Q’

s

examples . I t is with q . 155the tr1ie and cloae m'igind oi the beautiiul F. v . 13:

A Boolt oi Verses underneath the Bowh .

A jug oi'

Wine . a Loai oi Bread—a nd‘

rhou

Beside me singing in th e W ildernessOh . Wilderness m am dise enovv.

Compare qq. 25.32 . 40 . at pas tas .

1 . W means also “a n d .

"and W . renders it "a skin o l

'

wine .

z. dimin or"divan a oollectlon oi verses in the alphabetieal order oi the

final le t ters of the end rhymes (Steingass) . Like this co llection of quatrains .in fac t .

3. enough to lteep liie in one . Steingass renders the

sh a m an hm remaine d life. or. the agoniea o t death w . translates "a

moment ol respite in life .

"which is hardly strong enough .

"A stopper oi the

last brea th"would aeourately render the opening oi the line .

4 . Cornpare F . v . 1 1 . line 3: Where name ofSlave and Sul tan is forgo t .

150 .

This quatrain is B . 11. 362. 739 and B . 7 17. whence (and from here)it becomes w . 500 . I t shares with q . t os the sentiment oi F. v . 4z. q.

q . 102 .

1 . Literally. live thou just ly .

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Thls qu traia ls C . n3.m m w a r m. ”

Yu n nan 17as Day‘

s Madam did pu pa e ;

TM W W S M M G W ;

Drint l lor you know not whm m m nor whyDrink ! b r you hnow not why m n nor where.

t . Literally. "they me tured- they coohed.

"Vil e q .

a.

so Comm Behai-iatin. 1st Garden :Thy share hu been allotted to thee fmm all s tem ity ;

Row long wilt thou distrm thyseli ior a livelihood.

since the final end ' of this world issuppo se thyse lf to be noth ing. and be free.

Ga ze as l may‘on all sides ,

in the garden flows ’a stru m fi'

om the river Kaun r.‘

sit thou than in heaven wi th one heaven ly-faced.

“152 .

Be happy ! they sett led ‘ thy reward ’

yes ta'day.

‘

a rd beyond the ru eh of‘ all thy longings’ is yes terday

[M a ri ya-r

‘53This qrn trfi n

’

a C agB. R 334. B . i s7° . L- 693. S. P

I t B ah n L 7g tb m b repa h i n th t l h ve unt i n l h th t m

1 . I b e v e han u h mn nhg tb eolour rd w d tb 'n by gu n ;

“ruby

"wine . reiniorced by

“tu lip

-mu d"

2. L b “pure '

3. L b “pure in th'

n fine m tb am -u dflh ’ d e-h dn fi

sem i n al

lat

l do not find th’

s qm in in any d tb ten s m th r cnm i h n fi n . W’

e in t

in it tb idn ot F . v . ;-

z. quo te d sab q - 134 (q a ). M a n ne d-rmfir th remainder ol I -

‘

s qm rain . Com e t} 4 1

l .

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272 Notes

2 . Compare Gulistan . Introduc tionCloud. and wind. and moon . and sun . move in the sky.

That thou mays t gain bread . and not eat it uneonoerned.

For thee all are revolving and obedient .

I t is agains t the requirements ofjustioe ii thou obeyest not .!

155.

. 448 .

andW . 479. Compare q . 149. which is identical in sentime nt and idea . and with

149.

1 . dast dadmt z to happenmn eome to pasa

2 . B . ii L. . N and W . read “two mens ofwine .

" 2 Vidr q . 77 . no te 4 .

and q . 104 . note 5. M e» (or m ) is a variable measure . The m -i- tabrixi‘

equals about 7} lbs . . the m ie liah i‘ equals 14§- 15 lbs . the m i m i‘ equals3o lbs . and the m -s-shdht

’

a i' equals 1 16 1bs . Herrick uses the term twioe to

indica te a mm ure . (Hu pendea : To Anthea).Behold for us the Naked Graoes stay.

With maunds ot’

roses ior to strew the way.

And againThere . filling maunds with cows lips. you

a Dialogue . )

3. P. . N . . and W . read with a tulip-checked one sit ting . and C . and

L . .

“with a moonM d one ."

4 . C . reads That wou ld be a luxury . fit pas time forany sultan .

” L. roads

I t is a luxury the proceeding of any sul tan .

" lo

156 .

This quatrain is C . 469. B . ii. 589. L. 694 . S . P 44 1 . B . 685. N . 447 . and W . 478 .

Whe ther by acciden t or by design . it seems to be connected with the precedingruba °

i. which is rare in a diwan arrangement .

Transcript and Translation

e x “A be fil e s»J'Jffl

.Jild ) ; fl} S5. Jil l—b ) ! bar e .

had I a hand in my own revolut ions .’

I would have saved myse lf from giddiness .

155.

If a loaf of Wheaten -bread be forthcom ing.l

a gourd of wine ,’ and a th igh -bone of m utton,and then . if thou ‘

and I be s itting in the w ilde rness .that would be a joy to wh ich no sultan can set bounds .

‘

156 .

I f henceforth two m easures of w ine come to thy hand .

drink thou wine in every assembly and congregation .

273

274 Note

1 . N . and W. read "for he who acts e liminating the refor-onceto God

a. Litera lly . “has freedom trom care leisure .

3. A good speeimen oi oriental imagery . W. translates “irom saintly airs

hke yom a or griei like mine .

"N . translates " he is spared the unp lesn n tnes s oi

aeeing moustaches like yours . e tc . C] . M . . I . 2955

157 .

B . ii. 590 . L . 732 . B . 7m . W . 490 . ttnd it

is No . 30 0 ! E . C .

’

s examples . B . ii. 593. N . 450 (S . P . 444) is a paraphrase d it .

We recognise in it the sentiment oi’

F. v . 99 :

Ah Love ! could you and l with I-iim consp ire

To grasp this sorry Scheme oi Things entire .

Would we not shatter it to hits—and theh

Remould it nearer to the ii eart'

s desire !

The quatrain in N . runs :

it'

l were free and could use my own volition .

And independen t oi the griefs oi Fate and oi good and bad.

l t were bet ter that in this hole oi depravityI had neither come . nor gone . nor lived .

’

Orientalists will recognise here a coarseness . common in oriental literature . but

1 . Literally . " il my coming was by me.

2 .

'

slsm—i-M dk. the world . or. the human body . C . . P and L. read in

this ruined monastery .

"

158 .

This quatrain (which . ending in d. is out of its dlwi n order) is W . 2 18.

taken from this M S . P. 190 . B . ii. 235. L. 331 . and B . 327 are somewhat similarin sentiment . but may be regarded as only corresponding quatrains .

We have here the germ oi the 0pening and closing vm es o i F.

’

s“Km

s timuli sec tion . with their references to hungers tricken Ramazfin (F . v .

and F. v. 90 :

The little M oon look'

d in that all were seeking .And then they jogg ’

d each other. Brother ! Bro ther !Now for the Porter‘

s shoulderoknot 11.-cre aking !1 . Ramafi n is the nin th month oi the M uhammadan year. which is

observed as a month of fasting and penance . during which rigid M uslims neithereat . drink . wash er caress their wives . The first day o i Sbawwi l is thereiore

eagerly looked forward to in the East .

2 . Literally . ofgrowing . burgeoning . La . Spring .

3. The kaM is the profes ional atorl er. or iufrort’

u ton of the oriental

e-of ww a ow w fl') v o tiv e)

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4 . pasht means the back . and also the kno t upon which porters carrytheir burdens W inc lines to read this pusht bast .‘a load . or pack . rather thanpusht pusht . which h e says h e does not unders tand I t is undoubtedly a poe tic formofpus/stdm itt} which means back to back . as porters he lp one ano ther to raise

their loads

The final passage . containing the history of this M S related by the scribeM ahmud Yerh iidiki. is writ ten in Arab ic . as is commonly the case in Persian M SS

d Ul hau l Ase .) sailfi sh-allM l

0. a l l M 1

6:

M M fi b er-“f p 25 r

ho

l e d -ll) Ha "Ge l—9 Al’ s—V” s um

J‘n b M l Hf")

a)”sal l»! All te l-e .

now com es that time when Bottle s upon the shoulder !they say.

— for the porters come and are back to back .

‘

END or ru n guarm m s .

Written by the humble slave , who is in need of. rnerc ies

of Eternal God, Mahmud Yerbudaki . Fin ished in the lastdecade of Safar, with bless ing and victo ry, in the year E ighthundred and sixty-five of the Hijrah of the Prophe t, uponwhom be peace . and benedict ion. and honour ; in the capitalShiraz .

May God most h igh protect her from evils .

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B IBLIOGRAPHY

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282 8 8W .

rob Ancien Fonds349. 18 14 10. 213100 Supp lement Perean 823. ii

'

. 92-1

tod Suppiement Pu san 846, ruba‘iyat, da ted ant . 933

10: Supp lement Persan 793. t. 104. 6 1uba'

iyat in an t rib cen tury (m a -l

handwriting .

1¢ Supplement Persan 833. A MS oi the Atash M M ,“ruba

'

iyah dated a .u. 121 7 (A.o . 18m ).

nii'

l‘

l B‘

l l’

lI I . B ii

1 1 MSa No . 35. oontaining 238 ruba’iyat .

12 No. 666, 6513 No . 67 1 . a colieetion of m ba

’

iyah w g o f which

18 A B S. and a Turkiah veri on by Daui-t Shah .

1& 1'

he 8ankipur his. Thk m dim m ed fi W d th m t

th at theee eheets were leem me preaa I t is dated a m w -a

m w m m um sog mum . l t is th e hm at oofle c t ionh m ni so eariy a date .

rgs‘

l‘

ehm . 186 1 . 460

45321 (a ch e 716

26 & . M shu x. 1m 49

n in th “ m m u d m m . a. l . n gg

as A M d pne-s fl h d at m w ofl ap

Altar.“

y u m m

BIBLIOGRAPHY

284 W k!

48 u t American. &om th e 3rd Londm editioa . M 1878. (The

zy d editinn d this m pnhhsb ed in wgs. )

49s A lman qnarco print ol the text alone m ism ed at the eame time as

the ahovq printzed on one d de oniy ol stripe ot’

paperfi h e iore

edge heing ieit unM iihe a Ch ine-e or japanu e book. I t has 45

M u d m fitb m imprh u or daee . A Non on page r ea

p lains that it is printed as au ac oommnim t to th e Vedder

afia me m at the end oi the book.

The m mdw ed in eise only. Boeton . 1886 ; 4to .

Pop ulat editioo . “011. 1894s 4to . With an

K.

53The Works oi Edward FitzGa -ald. Bod en . 1887 . Two vols . VoL I .

54

55 Pamphlet edifiom ismed at so oente. in a green pap er wn ppa .

The Bibelot edition. Portland (Maine). 1893. Maria .

The Oid Wod d edition . Portland (Maine). 1895. Marker.

The SL Panl edition . Pm .

Th e u uifivafia nm fidifion d Nathm Haekeh Dd e in z vok.

Knight ) . Th is monumentai work is a

marvel oi oaretul oolla tion and compilation. I n it the iulles t

reterencee are gim to all otha ' tr-anslationa and the ionr

editions are minuteiy oompared . Ali the hes t magu ine litera

turc is h clnded. and most of the poetry insph ed by 0mar.

I t is a work that no stndent om ar cen do without ; bnt I

have reineed to ailcw it to be published in liadm d.

1897 . L C . Pagc &Co .

OTHER ENGLISH TRAN SLATIONS.B . ii . Wh infie ld . xst edition, 1882 ; containing 253quatn ins ."

the text.3rd edition, 1893; containing 267 quatrains .

Anonymous . [EL AL Johneom] “The Dialogue ot the Gulshan i

Khayyim . London . 1887 .

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285 B ibliography

Saturday Review .January 16 . 1886. 0. H . Mccarthy . )Macmillan'

s Magazine. November, 1887. H . G . Keene .

“OmarKhayyim .

"

The New Englander (New Haven. Vol . X LIX . 328 .

W . L. Phelps .

“Schopenhauer and Omar Khayyam .

"

Harvard Month ly (Cambridge , Mesa ). December. 1885. A . B .

Houghton .

“A Study in Despair.

"

Fortnightly Review. july. 4 889. E . Gos se . Edward FitzGerald .

Blackwood 's Edinburgh Magazine . November. 1889. F . H . Groom e .

Edward FitzGerald .

"

Cornhill Magazine . December. 1890 .

“Omar Khayyim '

s Ruba'

iyat .(Trans lation of t o Ruba ’

iyat. )Nationa l Review. December. 1890 . C . 1. Pic kering .

“’U1nar of

Naishapur.

"

Th e Nation . October 26. 1893. Moncure D . Conway .

“The OmarKhayyam Cult in England .

English I llustrated Magazine . February. 1894. E. Clodd . EdwardFitrGerald .

Ca lcutta Review, 1895. H . G . Keene . Loose Stanzas .

l l Convit o 1895. pp . 397 -

4 15. A. de Bosie .

"Note eu

Omar Khayyam c an Elihu Vedder.

Fortnightly Review. December. 1896. J. A . Murray. Omar

Indian Magazine . March 1 898. B . B . Nagarkar. Lecture on

Omar Khaiyam .

”

I have purpose ly avoided Foreign Magazine Articles. exceptwhere they are of great importance .

I do not propose to give reierences to poems in praise or in

imitation ofOmar. Their name is legion . The most notable willbe found among the works of Andrew Lang. Mathilde B lind.Christopher Cranch , Theodore Watt s, and Rosamund MarriottWatson. R . lo C allis on s has fi lled the upper h alf of a sma llbook with such verses . All these find a place in Mr. N . H . Do le ‘

s

monumental edition .

GENERAL ITEMS .

94 One of the most interesting and at the same time una ttainable itemsin the literature of Omar is th e fulfilment oi FitzGerald'

s idea of

putting th e quatrains into Latin verse , as fol lows :Ruba'iyat ofOmar Khayyam . th e Astronomer-poet of Persia .

rendered in to English verse by Edward Fit erald . and in to

Latin verse by Herbert Wilson Greene . M .A . . Fe llowof Magda len Co llege, Oxford .

" Private ly Printed (Oxford). 1893.There shou ld a lso he men tioned Miss Liza Lehmann'

s Song Cyc le .“in a Persian Garden ,

"in which all. or parts oi. thirty-on e

quatrains are arranged for four voices . it was performed fo r

B ibliography

th e first tim e (in pub lic) at St . James ’s Hall , 14th December,

1896, and is fully described in th e Programme and AnalyticalRemarks ”

for that evening (Chappell) .

V . Schukovsky. Omar Khayyam . I Strastvuyushch iya Ch etv eroc tishiya . (Trans . : Omar Kh ayyam and th e wandering

Quatrains .) St Petersburg, 1898 .

E . Heron-Allen . Some Side ligh ts upon Edward FitzGerald’s

Poem ,‘Th e Ruba ’

iyat of Omar Khayyam .

’

B eing the sub

stance of a Lecture de livered at the Grosvenor Crescent C luband Women

’

s Institute on th e 22nd March , London ,

1898.

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290 Some Sidelights

so profound , as that which unites the lovers of the quatrains of

Omar Khayyam , in the form in wh ich they have been mad e

known to us by the beautifu l. the ete rna l poem ot Old Fitz—the Laird of Littlegrange .

The incunabulum, the earliest arch ive of the cul t. isadm ittedly the single verse a ttributed to the ghom of Oma r(by whom it was recited in a dream to his mother) and re

corded in the History of the Re ligion of the Ancien t Persian s.Parth ians and Medes," by Dr. Thomas Hyde , Regius Prolessor of Arabic in the Univers ity of Oxford, in the yearTh is is the quat ra in wh ich was rende red by FitzGerald in theIntroduction to his poem :

O thon who b urn'

et in Heart for those who burnI n Hell, whose iires thyaelf should feed in turn ;

Why. who art thou to teach . and H e to lcan .

’

The German renderings of j ose f vo n Hammer-Purgstall ‘ and

Friedr ich R iickert ‘would not by themse lves have called Oma rto the pos ition which he holds to-day among the poe ts of theworld , and without the poem of FitzGerald th e record of theastronomer-poe t m ight have closed with the public ation of hist reatise upon A lgebra and th e h ighe r mathemat ics, wh ich wasgiven to the world in

'

1851 by Dr . Woep cke , Profe ssor of Mathe

Oxiord. 1700 ; 2nd Edition . 1760. Appendix . pp 529. 530.

3. Dr. Hyde ‘

s rendering runs :

0 combus tus combustus Combustione !Vac . a te es t Ignie Gehennae Accw sis l

which is a more cmrect rendering than FitaGerald’

H of the original. hich ia

Persian :

5.

"Grammatik . Poe t ik und Rhe torik der Purs er. herauagegeben m

W . Pu nch . Gotha. 1874 .

Edward FitzGem ld'

s Poem 291

m atics in the Universi ty of Bonn Dr . Woep cke has

pointed out in the Introduction to h is translation that theAlgebra of Omar Khayyam first attracted the not ice of

mathemat icians in 1 742, when a Dutch savant, GerardM eerman , cal led attention to a manuscript of h is treat ise ,bequeathed by one Warner to the town of Leyden . The

ci tat ion occurs in the In troduction to M eerm an'

s Specimencalcul i fluxionalis . Succeeding m athematicians called atten

tion to the work ; but the first importan t cons iderat ion that itrece ived was at th e hands of L . A . Sedillo t, who announced inthe Noum au j ournal Asiatique, in May, 1 834 , the d iscove ry of anincomple te MS . of the same treatise in the B ibl iotheque Royalein Paris . I t was reserved for Professor L ibri to d iscover, in thesame place , a comple te MS . of the work, and it was from the

Leyden M5 the Sed illot fragment, and the Libri MS . that

Dr . Woep cke ed ited h is adm irable text and translation . I n h isIntroduct ion Dr . Woepcke gives a translat ion of the accountof Omar from the Tarikh ul bukami ofJamal ud Din ’Ali ,wh ichhas been so often quoted in art icles upon the poet,7 and

obse rves upon it that Omar is a de testable man, but an nu

equalled astronomer ; he is perhaps a here tic, bu t surely be is aphilosopher of the first orde r . ” This Opinionwould appear to havebeen shared by Elphinstone ,‘who , in his account ofCabul ,placeson record what may, perhaps, be looked upon as an undes irableprecursor of th e Omar Khayyam C lub. H e says : “Anothersect , which is sometimes confounded wi th the Suns . is onewh ich bears the name of Moollah Zukkee , who was its greatpatron in Cabu l . I ts followers hold that all the prophets wereimpostors and all reve latio n an inven tion . They seem verydoubtful of the truth of a future sta te, and even of the be ing of

6 .

"L‘

Algébre d’

Omar AlkbAyyami. publiée . traduite e t accompegnee

d‘

extraits de manuscrits inédits par P . Woepeke Paris . 1851 .

7 . Vil e Nathan H . Do le '

s M ult ivariorum edition of th e Ruba ’

iyat ofOmar Khayyem .

" Boston (M ass ). 1896 Vol . ii. . pp . 457-46 1 .

8 . The Hon . M oun tst uart Elph instone .

"An eooount ol the K ingdom of

Caubu l and its Dependencies in Persia . Tartar-y. and India " London. 1815.

(311 . v . . p. 209.

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upon Edward Ft'

ts ld’

s Poem 295

read ing every work to wh ich FitzGerald re fe rs in his le tters ,during the t ime when he was compos ing his poem , I havetraced the actual originals of those debatable l ines, and

d iscovered the sources from which his inform ation concerning Persia and the Persians was derived .

FitzGeraId, in 1845. was repe lled rather than attracted byOriental m atters . as we know from the contempt he expressedconce rn ing El iot Warburton

'

s The Cresce nt and the Cross.”

published in that year ; but in 1 846 Professor Cowe ll wastranslating som e Odes of Hafiz,”and sent some of his renderings to FitzGerald, who was grea tly impressed by them . I t

was not . however, until 1853tha t , fired by Cowe ll ’s enthusiasm ,

he addressed h im se lf se riously to the study of the Pers ianlanguage , reading as a foundation Sir Wm . jones

’s PersianGrammar, wh ich exactly su ited him , as all the exam ples of therules are given in beaut ifu l l ines from Hafiz. Sa

'

ad i , and otherPersian poe ts . H e records buying a Gulistan (of Sa

’

adi)“wh ils t sti ll studying the Grammar. but it did no t very greatlyinfluence h is later work . I n 1854 he read and paraphrasedjami's “Salaman and Absal , wh ich he printed for privatec irculation in 1856, and reprinted in 1 871 . After Salamancame Hafiz, t he text he used be ing the Cal cutta edit ion of1791 , bought for h im by Professor Cowe ll . I n 1856 he had

received, also from Professor Cowe ll , a copy of the MS . ofOmar Khayyam , wh ich Cowe ll had found uncataloguedand unknown among the Ouse ley MSS . in the Bodle ianLibra ry at Oxford . I t was about th is time also that hebegan to correspond with the em inent French Orienta listGarcin de Tassy. about the latte r’s cr itica l essay upon the

Man t ik-ut -Ta ir of Ferid -udd in Attar, wi th . wh ich he had

already become acquainted in De Sacy’

s notes to the PendNamah of the sam e poe t ;” and early in 1857 be borrowed

13. The se were no t published until September. 1854 . when they appeared

anonymously in Frm r’s MW , and enlled forth further praise from Fit sGerald .

14 . E . B . Eastwick . The Co lman . or Rose Garden . London. 1853.

15. Pend-Nameh. on Livre dee Conseile de Perid eddin At tar.

" Traduita publié par M . le Silvestre de Secy . Paris . 1819 . At p . 4 1 of this work

tbe parab le of jesus and the bit ter water in th e jar is given at length in French

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upon Edward FitrGerald'

s Poem 299

several th ings and instructed him in others . and h is interestbeing once more aroused in Omar Khayyam . he prepa red hissecond ed ition (tha t of in which we find several new

quatra ins (ten in all). the originals ofmost ofwh ich are commonto Nicolas ’

s translation and the Calcut ta M S . FitzGerald’

s

note upon the dying utterance of N izam ui M ul k cam e fromDe Tas sy

’

s translat ion of the Mant ik-ut -Ta ir, wh ich he sen t toFitzGerald in exchange for a copy of th is translat ion by Nico las .After th is , FitzGerald pract ically dropped the study of Pers ianl iterature ; he reduced the number of h is quatrains to 10 1 , andgave us what for all pract ical purposes was the final form ofhis poem in the th ird ed it ion (of

I n this recapitulat ion ofFitzGerald ’

s study of the Ruba xyat .

I fear that I have pe rforce trave lled over we ll - trodden ground,but it has been nece ssary for the pu rpose I have in view ofshowing how those studies influenced h is poem . We have ,

then , as h is acknowledged materials

(i. ) The Odes of Hafiz, translated by ProfessorCowe ll in 1 846, and publ ished in 1 854 ,

and late r, the Calcutta text .Sir W illiam j ones 's Grammar of the Persian

Language .

(i i i . ) The Gu listan of Sa ’

adi .

(iv . ) The Salaman and Absal ofJami .(v . ) Th e Mant ik-ut -Ta ir of Attar .(vi . ) Binn ing'

s Journal .And of Omar Khayyam ’s Ruba iyat,

(v u. ) The Bodle ian MS .

(vi ii . ) The Calcutta MS .

(ix . ) Nicolas’

s Trans lat ion and Text .

I propo se to exam ine these materials in the ir chronologica lorder. and call attention to those passages whose echoes wefind in FitzGerald

’

s poem .

I . I t is no t surprising that the future translator (in

default of that be tt er word for wh ich Professor Norton appea ls)of the Ruba ’ iyat of Omar Khayyam should first have been

y o Scu m

at tracted w the su dy of Persian by th e Odes of Hafix as

d fi r a oa or the two poa s are b otba s h soe g

indeed. Tha ’

e is reeorded a eaying of the gm t Akhar M

tha t“an ode of H161 is the wine, and a quatrain of 0¢n r is

I nke tbe following para lld s fi-om the Ods of

Hafiz translated by COV d I :

L‘

l'

h oe knov e et not the seceets sa A M men’

d—eha h-ek

« m ay.

the Veil sdo not de-pafi .

[m d Darh e- rou d th e

M fo r t h e Paflh e ef

Eta -Ry.He doth“M im e -ct.

w e is a parallei for this in the Bodleian MS.

94 . To speakp lain langm ce and not h pan hles .

we are p layed togeth er in a baby gm e npon th e cbwof exietence ,

and one by one re tnm to tb e bos of noue aia enee .

’

69. But he lpiees Pteoes of the Game He ph ys

Upon this equerb oard of Nigbts and Days

Hither and thitherm and eh ecks and slays.And m e bym backin the Cloeet h yt

So that the senfiment om sz com es clearn rom Hi fiz.

l l . Rest not thy trus t on that 9 10 . Andfllil fitflw m ,

night patrolling star.’ for that that brings the koee

Shall talne jamd and Kafio

Hath stolen Kam‘

crown and

the girdle of Kay Khusraw. WellJet h tabe th em i Whathave we to do

With Kaikobi d tbe Great, orKaikhou '

u ?

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upon Edward FitzGorald'

s Poem 303

Here we have aga in the insp iration for the openingquatrains ci ted above .

p . 102 . By th e approach of Spring 8. The lea ves of life keep fa llingand th e return ofDecember one by one .

the leaves of our life are

continually fo lded .

lo

This is a distich culled by Sir Wm . jones from OmarKhayyam him se lf, and from a quatrain which occurs in the

Calcutta MS . (No . but FitzGerald was evidently “rem inded of it" by Nico las ’

s text, whe re it is No. 402, for the l inedoes not occur in h is first edition . I t was doubtless the abovequotat ion that origina lly fixed it in h is m ind .

On p . 106 . Th e spider holds th e veil in th e palace ofCaesar;The ow l stands sentine l on th e watch -tower of Afrasiab .

“Th is is a constan tly recurring illustration of the van ity of

earthly glory in Pers ian belles -lama . FitzGerald took h isquatra in No . 16 from th is, and from the Calcutta MS .

p . 1 1 1 . A garden more fresh than iram indeed is gone with all

th e bower of Iram .“ his rose .

I cannot ascertain whet her FitzGerald had studiedS . Rousseau’s Flowers of Pers ian Literature , which was

published in 180 1 as a compan ion to SirW .Jones 's PersianGrammar,

”but at p . 71 of that work is an account of the

Garden of Iram , translated by Jonathan Scott from the

JAM ! (Tohfet al Mujalis ) . References to th isfabulous garden, however, occur constantly in all Pers ianl ite rature .

At p p . 1 23- 1 24 occur quotations referr ing to the images ofthe Caravan in the desert , and the cocko crow rousing the

apathet ic sleepers . At p . 132, in an ode from Hafiz we find

the inaccess ibil ity of the secrets of futuri ty and the ignorance

o‘er

‘b flr‘v o-“l fi

”

22—2

$4 Sea m

of th e ' ise on this subject'and M y in the fi d -u b

recom ended to tb stm s at the end ef the fim we

w m a m m m a m mm w m

I I L We h n sem fls t std y of

jooes'

s Pers ian Gram er m fi ll in m be h d

m u m m a w ww m ; u

h k rfi y m fi fl tfi t a mfi d m mattract ed b the sm f and anth om

’

n n verss ol w fi

“W M i r we gather“ echoe d them in

his poa . M M a

'

re B s :

Gm .

M L ” :

“M M M fl

“M f ‘fi h efifi ‘ “fi & r “hu g-1 d :

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305 Sam : Sidelights

sup erficial manner , for I found it difi cult to arou se my own

int erest in it . but readers of FitzGerald’

s paraphras e will

recognise many l ines wh ich contain thoughts which reapp eare din h is ruba ’iyat . One passage , however. occurs in it to whic hespecial reference must be made . and that is the couple t

Drinking, that cup ofHappiness and TearsI n which Farewe ll had neva yet been flung.

Th is image recurs in FitzGerald'

s opening lines of h isfirst ed ition

Awake ! for Morning in the Bowl ofNightHas flung th e Stone that puts the Stars to Flight

V . The Mantik-ut -Tair of Fe t id-ud-din Attar is by far themost important of the m ate rials under exam inat ion , for it isnot too much to say that it m ight properly have been cited on

the title-page of FitzGerald'

s poem as one of the sources ofthat work. I t is one of the most im portan t expositions thathave come down to us of that alliance of re l igious reve lat ionand m undane phi losophy which the Musl ims in general, andthe Sufiph ilosophers in part icular, have from all time attemptedto demonstrate . The ph ilosoph ical study of re ligions is neithermore nor less than an attem pt to solve the en igma of nature ,and in Pe rsia th is s tudy has been the constant care of theSufis . They commence by the post ula tion of a vast Panthe ismin wh ich everything 15God save alone God h im se lf, everyth ingbe ing regarded by them as an emanation from God and everyth ing be ing finally reabsorbed in to God . As opposed to th is,Muhammadan ism is the gospe l of the abstract and personalUnity of God . and it is in teresting to note that Muhammad,adm itting the personal ities of Moses , th e Prophets and Christ .looked upon Christ ian ity as a kind of deve loped Judaism ,

wh ich author ises us in concluding that Islam itself is noth ingmore than an aberration of Christiani ty .

Sufism , as it presents itsel f to the student of Omar Khay

yam and Ferid -ud -din Attar, has been adm irably de scribed by

upon Edward Fit em ld’

s Poem 307

the great English traveller and Oriental scholar Sir RichardBurton ; he says : I t is the re ligion of beau ty, whose leadingprinciple is that of earthly, the im perfect type of heavenly love .

I ts h igh pries ts are Anacreont ic poets ; its ri tes, w ine , mus icand danc ing, spir itually considered ; and its places of worsh ip ,meadows ‘

and gardens where the pe rfume of the rose and the

song of the nightingale , by charming th e heart , are supposedto improve the mind of the The first Sufi (a wordder ived from u

)“suf m wool , the mate rial of wh ich the robes

of dervishes and fakirs are made ) was one Abu Hash im Kufa ,

who l ived in the second half of th e e ighth century A. D . , so thatSufism was only two centuries old when Omar Khayyamflourished, and undoubtedly its greatest priest and poe twas M uhamm ad bin Ibrah im Nishapuri Fer

‘

id -ud -din Attar(meaning Pearl of th e Fa ith , the Druggist ,” from h is trade ,wh ich was that of an o il -pres ser), born, as h is name deno tes ,at Omar ’s own town of N ishapur in 1 1 19 A.O. , and massac redby the soldiers of Gengiz Khan in 1 230, and in the 1 10th

yea r of h is age . The story of h is conversion to philosoph icalrel igion is told to the flee t that a Sufi Darvish apost roph izedhim one day in h is shop , congratulat ing h im se lf that he hadno merchandise to carry on the Mystic Road , or Or ientalWay of Salvat ion,

”and exhorting Attar to prepare himse lf

for the journey .

a t

Attar, l ike almost eve ry other Persianpoe t ,wrote an immensequant ity of verse , but h is most in terest ing and im portant workis undoubtedly h is “Language of Birds ," a t itle which he

borrowed from the passage in the Qur’

i n , where Solomondeclares , on his access ion to the throne of David, Oh, men lI understand the language of the No exposition ofthe doctrines of Sufism could be more comple te than that

contained in th is book , and as those doctrines are prom inent

39. R . P. Burton.

'° Sindh . and the Raees that inhabit the Valley of the

Indus. " London. 1851 . Ch. viii . p. zor.40 . Chap. a vti. , v. 16.

in the sen timents om ar Khayyim , we may sha t ly m te

thm as follows :

(i. ) All creat ed beings are emanations fiom Cvo d

and are finally reabeorbed in God.

rites and tenets , by the way, leave mnch to be deeired

on the seore of social ethics .

And these doctrines are clothed in a wealth of imagery.

often licentious, which , like the doctrine of Platonis n, invokeGod under thc form of bea uty, plu m e and woman—flvhich

are one . I t may be observed that the Sufis do no t adm it the

contention of the strict Muhamm adans that they are ha et ies ;

indeed, Atti r himsd fi in the epflogue m this poem says

and immed iately after implore: God to keep him

I will now, following as far as possible the system observed

above point ofl some of the pfincipal parallels between the

Mantik-ut -Ta ir and FitzGerald ’

s Ruba'iyat. The lines in the

Mantik are counted bi distichs (d) .

41 . W in ch-p i v. isi :"We are ol God and retnrn to him .

4a.

"Benu th th is hu ven of am re m rble l am neither an b depu d-n

N e d - e fl d l-‘ fh’

gi rifl t jwe‘ i'e‘ w -‘ a h

43. I rm ain neither an infidd nor a hln lin .

Between the two l rem in bev ildeu d.

t ar mu w u ; s u @.

44 . Open this door to v orth lu s me .

And indicate a path to this pethless aanone .

M fl eflv‘n e‘ x

g au g e s-h )» w eh é -‘fi‘w w

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310 Some Sidd o’

glm

There is a qua train in Omar (L . 326 , C . 236, B . 322 ,

W . 147, N . 1 20 , S . P. 1 20) which is alm ost identical wi th th is .At d . 2 16-8. Oh l Thou who pardonest my faults and acoep test my excuses l

am an hundred times oonsumed , why burn me again . It is bythy impulsion that my blood boils ; let me shew my ardour.

n

Here we have part of the sentiment of the quatuor ofquatrains 78-81 . There is a para lle l quatrain for th is in Om ar ,(L. 449, C . 286, W . 276, N . 236, S . P. 235, B . 445, B . ii. 308)but the whole of th is great qua tuor is a redelivery of th ese nt iments conveyed in th e parable quoted here ; a l itt lefurther on we find dd . 2 17 Gris

“) to 220 . Oh ! Thou

my Creator ! the good and the bad act ions that I com

m it , I comm it with my body . Pardon my weakness and

eflace my faults . I am led away by my natura l instinctsand cast by Thee into uncerta inty ; therefore the good and

the bad I do com es from And further, d . 225:“Thou hast planted in the centre of my soul a black mole

original sin) . Thou hast marked me wi th a spot as

black as the skin of an Abyssinian ; but if I do not becom e

Thy mole , how can I become accepted by Thee ? Therefore to attain that state I have m ade my heart like a black

Abyssin ian Here we have the original of the linesFor all the Sin with which th e face of Man

I s blac kened , Man '

s forgiveness give—and take !This plea for reciprocal forgiveness appears aga in with

grea t force at d . 46 18 : Deign to notice neither the good nor

the bad that I have done . S ince Thou crea tedst me gratu itously,Thou m ust pardon me gratu itously .

"w We sha ll presently

M rdf w wflkv “ w e e

54 . By an error oi the Editor the numbei-s zu to m are repm ed twiee.

flwf er e’ k ref h f flu f -v fii d é f m “

upon Edward FitsGem ld’

s Poem 31 1

find other passages in the Mantik-ut -Tair which are identica l in sen timent with this quatuor . We will proceed again

with the pa ralle l passages .Mauri e -ur -Tam . FITZGERALD.

d . 240. So long as my Soul comes 43. And , ofl'

ering his Cu p , invitenot forth to my lips , I will your Soulcherish these thoughts .

“ Forth to your Lips to quaildd . 250 1 and 3031 open passages

phor.“

d . 302 . One night he (Muhammad) 31 . Up from Earth '

sCentre through

ascended to heaven , and all th e Seventh Ga tesecrets were revealed to I rose and on the

'

l'

hrone of

from God he Saturn sate ;obtained complete under And many a Knot unravel'd bystanding of all things .

" th e Road .

The “Seven Gates, or “Seven Heave ns, recur con

tinually all through the poem , so. dd . 27 1“

and e tc .

At d . 451 we find a re ference to the life -giving breath ofj esus,“and at d . 453to the Wh ite Hand of Moses .“Atd . 742 at passim the loves of the N ight ingale and the Rose .

“At d . 972 . An observer ofSpiritua l 33. Earth could not answer ; nor

Th in g s approached th e th e Seas that mournOcean , and as ked it why it I n flowing Purple of theirwas c lad in blue (purple) ;why this robe of mourning

Th e Ocean replied“I weep for my

o“! “f l ew -101)

Aru g u l a r“? “j“ Jim ) o

er

“M t r df d‘ r'

°

M4¢W N J~2 9

3m sn o w

given us the note which gave me the firs t d ue fnr tb es e

researches . A a nions illustra tion of FitzGerald'

s meth od

is found in connea ion with tbe pam ge at t ron zw l

'

he true

This together v ith

Mr. B inning’

s nohe on the pbenomena of the Oriental m ise ,

produced his line and note concerning“the t tom d

False Morning.

"The proom will be set out further on .

ag And m d m as WM alnqworld like Wind , it has gone the Waste.

Th is is one of two fiequenfly recm rent unages of dea th

in Persian poetry ; the otherwe find in d. 2288.

“Knowwt tho unot that everyman who is bm'

n , sinks into the earth and th e

—a figure as fiequent ly found in

Omar as the former one .

At d. 1866 . Hea ven and Hell are re» 68. Heav'

n bnt the Vil iun ol fiil~

flecdonm the one of thy fill'

d De-l ire,

goodna e and the other ot’

And Hell the Shadov fium a

thy anger.”

Here , again, we have a true 0riginal, for there is no paralle l

for No. 68 in Omar . PitzGerald was rem inded of it, but no

f efl r r' wf gvu b j er e e fi e-

‘r b an

t‘w' y uird cw i wi i

’w é k r“

of e f f s‘ w f'

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314 3m ma thoun nd times benu th th e m -don ed ha vm m h to

n vm w w tnto a jar, and ap iu into a bov i. They n ayrelashion me agzin a thoun nd fimea but I ehaB alv ays be

tainted -ith the bittem ees of deuth . I t eow nee me th at

PitzGerald , in his paraphrase of the Mantik,” reudered

Tbe Clay that I ain mede OLOiice was Man,

Who dying, and reeolved into the sam e

Obliterated Earth from v hich he cnme

Was for the Potter dug and chaned in tui-n

Would tum the sweetest Water into Tears .

And it was to th is passage of the Mant ik, and toalone , that we owe the quatrain No . 38.

And has not such a Story from of Old

Down Man'

s successive generatious roll'

d ,

Of such a clod ot'

saturated Bai-th

Cu t by the uaker into Human mould ?

I n the comment upon th is parable in the Mantik we find

the original of another quatrain of Fitzgerald .

W W W 1 -Wf fi W fl w r‘ w b u

w e‘r u fld t w f w v h r‘ w v ‘w2 k-J

M il fl-“l cfifl f -t e b M r‘ d w lfi k

W fl u l r‘ wl q-s ’

u‘flflfl r

‘ fi w‘ r‘ rl w

flfi r‘f flfi w s k ew e r“;

upon Edward Fi’

tzGrm ld'

s Poem 315

d . 2355. Thou thyse lf art los t . Ch ! 53. But if in vain , down on the

Thou that p ursues t the

Myst ery . Strive to discover Of Earth , and up to B eav n s

it , ere thy life be reft from unopening Door,thee , for if, to -day, whilst You gaze To day while You are

thou lives t thou findes t not You—how thenthyse lf, how then , when Tom orrow, You when shall bethou art dead , sha lt thou You no more ?

unrave l the secret of thineexistence ?"

The whole doctrine of the evanescence of the world iscontained in the 27th chapter, wh ich immediately followsth is , and which conta ins the germ of one of FitzGerald ’

s mostsarcastic qua tra in sd . 2409. I f thou seekest a mom ent 65. Th e Revelations of Devout and

of we ll -being in this world, Learn’

d

Sleep ! and then repeat Who rose be fore us and as

what thou hast seen in thy Prophets bum ’

d

dreams ." Are all but Stories which awoke

from Sleep ,They to ld their comrades and

to Sleep returned .

It may be observed , however, that FitzGerald translatedh is qua train h om No . 1 27 of the Calcutta MS .

We come now to another m ost interest ing side- light uponFitzGerald

'

s mental process . There is in the Calcutta MS .

(but not in the Bodleian MS . or N icolas) a quatrain, No . 387,wh ich m ay be thus rendered :

Neither thou nor I know th e Secret of Eternity,And neither can thou nor I read this Enigma .

There is ta lk ofme and thee behind the curtain ,

(But) When they rake th e curtain there remains neither thee norme.

”

From th is FitzGerald constructed two remarkable verses32 . There was the Door to whic h I found no Key ;There was the Veil through which I might not see

w h fl'x o'e umf ’J-f

u‘e‘ w wn

w'

q’fl‘ v e t

’s“

.re

‘

dik

- tf w

316 Some Sidd i‘

ghts

Some little talk awhile of M e and TheeTh ere was—and then no more of Th ee and Me .

34 . Then of the Th ee in Me who works beh ind

T'

he VeiL I lifted up my hands to find

A lamp amid the Darkness : and I heard .As from Without, The Mr with in Tim blind !

"

There are those , I be l ieve , who by Gen ius and by Powerof Brain " have found these two quatra ins qui te simple and

se lf-explanatory . For my own pa rt, I confess tha t I ne ve runde rstood them in the least until I found the two passages inFerid -ud -din Attar, wh ich evidently surged up in FitzGerald

’

s

brain when he read the Calcu tta quatrain . They are as

d . 3090 . Th e Creator of the world spoke thus to David from behind th eCurtain of the M rs t : Everything in the world , good or bad ,

visible or invisible , is mere substitute , un less it be M e , M e for

whom thou canst find neither substitute nor equa l. Sinc enothing can be substituted for Me , do not cease to abide in M e .

l am thy so ul , be not separated from Me ; I am necessary, thouart dependent upon M e Seek no t to exist apart from

and

d . 3735. Since long ago, rea lly. I am Thee and Thou art M e, we two are

b ut one . Art thou M e or am I Thee , is there any dualityin the matter ? Or else , I am thee , or thou art me , or thou,thou art thyse lf. Since thou art me and I am thee for ever, ourtwo bodies are one . That is all

This is an adm irable Spec imen of the Sufist ic argument ofUnity with God , or the Thee-in-Me that FitzGerald has

introduced with such myst ic skil l into h is Ruba 'iyat .

-r o ' W o e

g b- er‘ wf ofi

M kflmk' W u-“fl M fi d w 2 2fi ““fi e l d “a e e k ee »

f ee

i k c ‘ f ‘c o e rf k

M i o’ flw i

‘w » fli ex f tm ge k o‘ f e»