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The Quatrains as given in this volume differ slightly in order from that adopted by Fitzgerald, but the en- tire ioi retained by him are here included. These notes are given merely to suggest a few of the most obvious meanings, without the intention of limiting the imagination of those who will gain more pleasure from trusting to their own interpretations.
Cotocr.
The swirl which appears here, and is an ever- recurring feature in the work, represents the grad- ual concentration of the elements that combine to form life; the sudden pause through the reverse of the movement ^hich marks the instant of life, and then the gradual, ever- widening dispersion again of these elements into space.
ILtntrtg IJaprr.
The serpent, the vine in frurt, and the clinging plant in flower.
.frontispiece.
Omar, surrounded by his jovial companions, looks down on the ambitious warrior, the miser, the stu- dent, the theologian, and delivers his admonition.
CTttlc |3age.
i9utolishrr's iHarfc.
Derji cation. _
©mar's (Emblem.
A bird singing on a skull, while the rose of yester- day is floating away on the stream.
2Tf)C &bjafcmtng. Verses 1-3.
Eijc (Chougrjtful .Soul to Solitutie retires. Verses 4-6.
2Tfie Inbttatton. Verses 7-10.
saJKSA-* *wi giiiuym
/
<Lt]f *ong in ttir lUiiilD-rrnrss. / passes n, 12.
8Tt>£- JSIoboinjj Bosr. Verses 17-16.
2Et)c Courts of HamsfinTi. Verses 17, iS.
2T.f)c Btbrr=lLtp. Verses 19-21.
2Ti)£ Hong 33fst. Verses 22-24.
This figure, representing Being, descends to a still profounder rest than that of sleep, as shown by the poppies falling from her hand. She is throw- ing aside the garment of life, and the flame of her existence is flickering to its close.
2Tf)£r>IotjD. Verses 25-2S.
The saints and sages of old are dimly discerned, like dried forms caught in the spiders' webs and dust of Time. Their vain theories and prophecies are symbolized in the circle of books each over- throwing its predecessor, with the grim skull as the centre.
ZMtyntc anu JLJ3Iiitf)rr? Verses 20. 30.
'• Into this Universe like Water, and out of it as Wind."
2Thr Cup of Despair. Verse 31.
2Ef)C Fain pursuit. Verses 32, 33. ' As in the case of the alchemist who endeavors to extract the secret of life from the living plant, heedless the while of his own life, which is passing away like the smoke from Ins furnace.
Omar's f^orosropr. Verses 34-36-
Presented symbolically. The vine entwining Ju- piter and the Pleiades, the stars under whose ascendency we are told Omar was born.1 With 1 Hit is remembered that the constellation of the Pleiades
was also called r.v the ancients " The Cluster of Grapes," it
mav throw a little tight on the metaphor
!!
22§r <fc .-
Wy^
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the poet's tendency of mind, one can easily see how he would compare favorably the absolute freedom and sincerity of the search for truth with- in the Tavern with the stagnation and ultimate petrifaction of thought within the Temple.
Fain Ctursttonincr. Verses 37-39.
Absorbed in the contemplation of the Universe, the soul of the philosopher rises even to
Cfje Ebrortf of Saturn.
Grasping many truths by the way, but ever baffled by the master problem of human fate.
STfjc Soul of trjr (Cup. Verses 40-42.
Murmurs lip to lip and gazes into Omar's eyes.
&1)C %\C3.btn\v potter. Verses 43-45.
As Omar, in imagination, saw the potter forming the cup out of clay that once lived, so the artist sees in the potter an angelic workman remoulding the clay into some form which may hold a far better wine than that of the cup from which the poet drank.
Che Cup of ILoue. Verses 46-48.
Che Cup of Qcath. Verse 49.
Che Sutrioe. Verses 50, $i.
In the cripple is typified the vast majority of man- kind who prefer (perhaps wisely) to remain in this " clay carcase ;' with which they are familiar and more or less satisfied, rather than to trust to the attenuated joys of unlimited space, whither the disembodied spirit passes.
Brath's Bcbtcfo. Verses 52-54.
The indignation on the frees of the great army of humanity is for the ignorance in which they re-
**
main, during this brief span of conscious existence, of all that lies before and after.
Ei)i Inrfaitahle jFatr. Verses 55-58.
This figure of an all-devouring sphinx stretched over the remains of Creation typifies the destruc- tive side of Nature, which " Taking all shapes from Mah to Mahi, they change and perish all.'1
STfie Bittrr Cup.
A pause to mark the change of tone in the poem.
2Trjc Batightrr of ttje Fine. Verse 59.
SEhc Sioorrr of Etrason. Verses 60, 61.
Both pages are here included in the composition.
2Tfjr Jarring Sects. Verses 62, 63.
Above is shown the Heaven-given wine (taken lit- erally or typically), below the sectarianism which loses sight of the spirit in fierce disputes over the letter.
2Thf jHigrjtg jHarjmuo. Verse 64.
Represented as Bacchus dispersing with the juice of the grape Physical Pain, Melancholy Madness, and Ambition, " The black horde that infest the soul.'*
Cf}f Ftnr. Verses 65, 66.
Ehc^Brrscnt listrning to thr Foirrs of thr Past. Verses 67-69.
2Tfjr Soul's 2rtstorr. Verses 70, 71.
She jFatrs gathering in thr Stars. Verses 72-74.
The artist has here carried the idea of the poet a step further, and represented the game as being played with the Universe instead of merely with man. Having laid aside the instruments of hu- man destiny, the Fates in illimitable nets now srather in the Stars themselves.
limitation. Verses 75. 76.
That of man's faculties is symbolized by the Eagle chained to the rock ; and the irrevocability of the laws of nature by the stars bound together and with their courses rigidly defined through space. Opposite
STfje JJeeorMrtg 3rtgel
Is shown, who with his attendants may well have ears bandaged to shut out the agonized appeals of humanity lifting up its hands in hopeless supplica- tion.
STrje ILast fHart. Verse 77.
Alone amid the remains of his race. Love dead at his feet, and the spirit of Evil whispering hatred of "this sorry scheme."
Hobe shrinking aftnghtcU at the sight of %z\\. Verse 78.
2The fHagrtalrn. Verses 79, 80.
In the Beginning. Verse 81.
Omar's reasoning has carried him so far that he cannot believe he is a mere irresponsible agent, nor can he persuade himself that he is entirely re- sponsible. He therefore concludes that he is both free and fated, and this conclusion leads to the
partem gibing ant! ^arrjon Imploring fljanos Filled with the tangled skein of human life.
En the potter's l^ouse. Verses 82, 83.
Che Sncrainlr) }3ot. Verses 84-86.
2The ILoquaetous Uessels. Verses 87-89.
She Bno of Bamawn. Verse 90.
©mar's 2Tomb. Verse 91.
Spring. Verses 93-95-
It is useless and even pernicious, if one wishes to
X
combat the seductiveness of the pleasures of the senses, utterly to ignore them. They exist as much as man's other faculties, and have their proper uses and place. Examine and dissect them, and one will be enabled to give them their proper weight. This is the aim of the poet against an overwhelming pressure in the other direction leading only to hypocrisy, a thing which Omar most of all detests.
gout!) anti •Ige. Verse 96.
2Efje Sorrj) Scheme. Verses 97-99.
Looking around and seeing such creatures as the buzzard, which only preys on the helpless or al- ready wounded creatures, and beholding every- where life secured by another's death, Love flies to the heart of Man, where alone in Nature it finds a refuge.
£rt fHemortam. Verses 100, 101.
The sigh of all. Omar, with his feeble hope of a future, but calmly contemplating inexorable death, still longs for a continuance of existence, if only in the hearts of his companions.
•artist's Signature. »
If an explanation of this be required, why may it not, in its high and low notes, represent the light and shade in which this work is done? Hastily plucked and rudely fashioned, this double pipe is (the artist believes) yet capable of producing some music worthy of the listening ear.
RUBAIYAT
OMAR KHAYYAM OF NAISHAPUR.
Note. For the convenience of the reader who may desire to confine himself to the text of Rubaiyat after studying Mr. Vedder*s accompaniment, the poem is here reprinted as published by Mr. Fitzgerald in his^fourth edition. This text was used by Mr. Vedder. but for his purpose he made occasional slight changes in it, interpolating indeed a verse of his own (number 44). He departed also from the strict order. This divergence from the order is indicated by the insertion of a parenthesis giving Mr. Vedder's number. Where the parenthesis is not used, it will be understood that Mr. Vedder's number corresponds with Mr. Fitzgerald's. The Notes are Mr. Fitzgerald's.
RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM
Wake ! For the Sun who scatter'd into flight The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.
ii
Before the phantom of False morning died,1 Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried, " When all the Temple is prepared within, Why nods the drowsy Worshipper outside ? "
in
And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before The Tavern shouted — " Open then the door ! You know how little while we have to stay, And, once departed, may return no more."
IV
Now the New Year reviving old Desires,2 The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the White Hand of Moses on the Bough Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.3
RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM
Irani indeed is gone with all his Rose,4
And Jamshyd's Sevn-ring'd Cup where no one knows ;
But still a Ruby gushes from the Vine, And many a Garden by the Water blows.
VI
And David's lips are lockt ; but in divine 5 High-piping Pehlevi, with Wine ! Wine ! Wine !
Red Wine ! — the Nightingale cries to the R s 2 That sallow cheek 6 of hers to incarnadine.
VII
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling :
The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter — and the Bird is on the Winer.
VIII
Whether at Naishapiir or Babylon, Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
IX
Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say : Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday ?
And this first Summer month that brings the Rose Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away.
RUBAIYi(T OF OMAR KHAYYA'
M
Well, let it take them ! What have we to do With Kaikobad the Great, or Kaikhosru ?
Let Zal and Rustum thunder as they will,7 Or Hatim call to Supper — heed not you.
XI
With me along the strip of Herbage strown That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave and Sultan is forgot — And Peace to Mahmud on his golden Throne !
XII
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness — Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow !
XIII
Some for the Glories of This World ; and some Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come ;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum ! 8
XIV
Look to the blowing Rose about us — " Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the world I blow,
At once the silken tassel of my Purse Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."9
RUbXiyXt OF OMAR KHAYyIm
XV
And those who husbanded the Golden grain, And those who flung it to the winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd As, buried once, Men want dug up again.
XVI
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon Turns Ashes — or it prospers ; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face, Lighting a little hour or two — was gone.
XVII
Think, in this batter' d Caravanserai Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp Abode his destin'd' Hour, and went his way.
XVIII
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep : 10
And Bahrain, that great Hunter — the Wild Ass Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep.
XIX
I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled ;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.
RUBAlYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM 7
XX
And this reviving Herb whose tender Green Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean — Ah, lean upon it lightly ! for who knows From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen !
XXI
Ah, my Beloved, fill the cup that clears To-day of past Regret and future Fears :
To-morrow ! — Why, To-morrow I may be Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n thousand Years.11
XXII
For some we loved, the loveliest and the best That from his Vintage rolling Time has prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before, And one by one crept silently to rest.
XXIII
And we, that now make merry in the Room They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom,
Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth Descend — ourselves to make a Couch — for whom ?
XXIV
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the Dust descend ;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and — sans End !
RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM XXY
Alike for those who for To-day prepare, And those that after some Tomorrow stare,
A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries, " Fools, your Reward is neither Here nor There.''
XXVI
Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd Of the Two Worlds so learnedly are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth ; their Words to Scorn Are scatter' d, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.
XXYII
Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about : but evermore Came out by the same door where in I went.
XXVIII
With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand wrought to make it grow ;
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd — " I came like Water, and like Wind I go."
XXIX
Into this Universe, and Why not knowing, Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing ; And out of it, as Wind along the Waste, I know not Whither* willy-nilly blowing.
RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM XXX
What, without asking, hither hurried Whence? And, without asking, Whither hurried hence !
Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine Must drown the memory of that insolence !
xxxi (xxxvn)
Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,12
And many a Knot unravell'd by the Road ; But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.
xxxii (xxxviii)
There was the Door to which I found no Key ; There was the Veil through which I could not see :
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee There was — and then no more of Thee and Me.13
xxxiii (xxxix)
Earth could not answer ; nor the Seas that mourn In flowing Purple, of their Lord forlorn ;
Nor rolling Heaven, with all' his Signs reveal'd And hidden by the sleeve of Night and Morn.
xxxiv (xl)
Then of the Thee in Me who works behind The Veil, I lifted up my hands to find
A Lamp amid the Darkness ; and I heard, As from Without — " The Me within Thee blind!
IO RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM
XXXV (XLl)
Then to the Lip of this poor earthen Urn I lean'd, the Secret of my Life to learn :
And Lip to Lip it murmur' d — " While you live, Drink! — for, once dead, you never shall return."
xxxvi (xlii)
I think the Vessel, that with fugitive Articulation answer' d, once did live,
And drink ; and Ah ! the passive Lip I kiss'd, How many Kisses might it take — and give !
xxxvii (xliii)
For I remember stopping by the way
To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay :
And with its all-obliterated Tongue It murmur'd — " Gently, Brother, gently, pray ! " M
xxxviii
Listen — a moment listen ! — Of the same
Poor Earth from which that Human Whisper came
The luckless Mould in which Mankind was cast They did compose, and call'd him by the name.
xxxix (xlv)
And not a drop that from our Cups we throw 15 For Earth to drink of, but may steal below
To quench the fire of Anguish in some Eye There hidden — far beneath, and long ago.
RUBAIYjCt OF OMAR KHAYYAM II
XL (XLVl)
As then the Tulip for her morning sup
Of Heav'nly Vintage from the soil looks up,
Do you devoutly do the like, till Heav'n To Earth invert you like an empty Cup,
XL I (XLVIl)
Perplext no more with Human or Divine, To-morrow's tangle to the winds resign, And lose your fingers in the tresses of The Cypress-slender Minister of Wine,
xlii (xlviii)
And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press, End in what All begins and ends in — Yes ;
Think then you are To-day what Yesterday You were — To-morrow you shall not be less.
xliii (xlix)
So when the Angel of the darker Drink At last shall find you by the river-brink,
And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul Forth to your Lips to quaff — you shall not shrink.16
XL iv (l)
Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside, And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
Were 't not a Shame — were 't not a Shame for him In this clay carcase crippled to abide ?
12 RUBllYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM
XLV (LI)
'T is but a Tent where takes his one-day's rest A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest ; The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash Strikes, and prepares it for another Guest.
XLVI (LI I)
And fear not lest Existence closing your Account, and mine, should know the like no more ;
The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.
XLVII (LIU)
When You and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh but the long long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds As the Sey'x Seas should heed a pebble-cast.
XLVIII (LIV)
A Moment's Halt — a momentary taste Of Being from the Well amid the WTaste —
And Lo ! — the phantom Caravan has reach'd The Nothing it set out from — Oh, make haste !
xlix (lv)
Would you that spangle of Existence spend About the secret — quick about it, Friend !
A Hair perhaps divides the False and True — And upon what, prithee, does Life depend ?
RUBAIYXT OF OMAR KHAYYAM 1 3
L (LVl)
A Hair perhaps divides the False and True ; Yes ; and a single Alif were the clue —
Could you but find it — to the Treasure-house, And peradventure to The Master too ;
li (lvii)
Whose secret Presence, through Creation's veins Running Quicksilver-like eludes your pains ;
Taking all shapes from Mah to Mahi ; 17 and They change and perish all — but He remains ;
lii (lviii)
A moment guess'd — then back behind the Fold Immerst of Darkness round the Drama roll'd
Which, for the Pastime of Eternity, He does Himself contrive, enact, behold.
liii (xxxn)
But if in vain, down on the stubborn floor
Of Earth, and up to Heav'n's unopening Door,
You gaze To-day, while You are You — how then To-morrow, You when shall be You no more ?
liv (xxxiii)
Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit Of This and That endeavour and dispute ; Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.
14 RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM
LV (LIX)
You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse I made a Second Marriage in my house ;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed, And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.
lvi (lx)
For " Is " and " Is-not " though with Rule and Line,18 And " Up-and-down " by Logic I define, Of all that one should care to fathom, I Was never deep in anything but — Wine.
lvii (lxi)
Ah, but my Computations, People say, Reduced the Year to better reckoning ? — Nay,
'T was only striking from the Calendar Unborn To-morrdw, and dead Yesterday.
lviii (lxii)
And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,
Came shining through the Dusk an Angel Shape
Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder ; and He bid me taste of it ; and 't was — the Grape !
lix (lxiii)
The Grape that can with Logic absolute The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute :19
The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute :
rubXiyat of omar khayyAm i 5
LX (LXIV)
The mighty Mahmud, Allah-breathing Lord, That all the misbelieving and black Horde 20 Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.
lxi (lxv)
Why, be this Juice the growth of God, who dare Blaspheme the twisted tendril as a Snare ?
A Blessing, we should use it, should we not ? And if a Curse — why, then, Who set it there ?
lxi i (lxyi)
I must abjure the Balm of Life, I must, Scared by some After-reckoning ta'en on trust,
Or lured with Hope of some Diviner Drink, To fill the Cup — when crumbled into Dust !
LXIII (LXVIl)
O threats of Hell and hopes of Paradise !
One thing at least is certain, — This Life flies ;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies ; The Flower that once has blown forever dies.
lxiv (lxviii)
Strange, is it not ? that of the myriads who Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through
Not one returns to tell us of the Road, Which to discover we must travel too.
\
1 6 RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYlM
LXV (LXIX)
The Revelations of Devout and Learn' d Who rose before us, and as Prophets burn'd,
Are all but Stories, which, awoke from Sleep They told their fellows, and to Sleep return'd.
lxvi (lxx)
I sent my Soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After-life to spell ; _
And by and by my Soul return'd to me, And answer'd, " I Myself am Heav'n and Hell."
lxvii (lxxi)
Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill' d Desire, And Hell the Shadow of a Soul on fire,
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves, So late emerg'd from, shall so soon expire.
lxviii (lxxii)
We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with this Sun-illumin'd Lantern held In Midnight by the Master of the Show ; 21
LXIX (LXXII)
Impotent Pieces of the Game He plays Upon this Checker-board of Nights and Days ;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays, And one by one back in the Closet lays.
RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM \J
LXX (LXXIV)
The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes But Right or Left as strikes the Player goes ;
And He that toss'd you down into the Field, He knows about it all — he knows — HE knows ! 22
LXXI (LXXY)
The Moving Finger writes ; and, having writ, Moves on : nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
lxxii (lxxvi)
And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die, Lift not your hands to // for help — for It As impotently rolls as you or I.
LXXIII (LXXVIIl)
With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man knead, And there of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed :
And the first Morning of Creation wrote What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.
'&>
lxxiv (xxxi)
Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare : To-Morrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair :
Drink ! for you know not whence you came, nor why Drink ! for you know not why you go, nor where.
RUBAIVAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM LXXY (XXXIV)
I tell you this — When, started from the Goal, Over the flaming shoulders of the Foal
Of Heav'n Parwm and Mushtari they flung,23 In my predestin'd Plot of Dust and Soul
LXXVI (XXXV)
The Vine had struck a fibre : which about If clings my Being — let the Dervish flout ; Of my Base metal may be filed a Key,
That shall unlock the Door he howls without.
LXXVII (XXXVl)
And this I know : whether the one True Light Kindle to Love, or Wrath-consume me quite, One Flash of It within the Tavern caught Better than in the Temple lost outright.
LXXVI 1 1
What ! out of senseless Nothing to provoke A conscious Something to resent the yoke
Of unpermitted Pleasure, under pain Of Everlasting Penalties, if broke !
LXXIX
What, from his helpless Creature be repaid Pure Gold for what he lent us dross-allay'd —
Sue for a Debt we never did contract, And cannot answer — Oh the sorry trade !
RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM IO,
LXXX
Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestin'd Evil round Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin !
LXXXI
Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake :
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man Is blacken'd — Man's Forgiveness give — and take !
LXXXII
As under cover of departing Day Slunk hunger-stricken Ramazan away,
Once more within the Potter's house alone I stood, surrounded by the Shapes of Clay.
LXXXI 1 1
Shapes of all Sorts and Sizes, great and small, That stood along the floor and by the wall ;
And some loquacious Vessels were ; and some Listen'd perhaps, but never talk'd at all.
LXXXIV
Said one among them — " Surely not in vain My substance of the common Earth was ta'en
And to this Figure moulded, to be broke, Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again."
20 RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM
LXXXV
Then said a Second — " Ne'er a peevish Bov Would break the Bowl from which he drank in joy :
And He that with his hand the Vessel made Will surely not in after Wrath destroy."
LXXXYI
After a momentary silence spake Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make ;
" They sneer at me for leaning all awrv : What ! did the Hand then of the Potter shake ? "
LXXXVII
Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot — I think a Siifi pipkin — waxing hot —
•• All this of Pot and Potter — Tell me then. Who makes — Who sells — Who buys — Who is the Pot?"2i
LXXXVIII
" Why," said another. " Some there are who tell Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell
The luckless Pots he marr'd in making — Pish ! He's a Good Fellow, and 't will all be well."
L XXX IX
" Well," murmur'd one. '" Let whoso make or buy, My Clay with long Oblivion is gone dry : But fill me with the old familiar Juice. Methinks I might recover by and by."
RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM 21
XC
So while the Vessels one by one were speaking, The little Moon look'd in that all were seeking : 25
And then they jogg'd each other, " Brother ! Brother ! Now for the Porter's shoulder-knot a-creakins: ! "
xci
Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide, And wash the Body whence the Life has died,
And lay me, shrouded in the living Leaf, By some not unfrequented Garden-side.
xcn
That ev'n my buried Ashes such a snare Of Vintage shall fling up into the Air
As not a True-believer passing by But shall be overtaken unaware.
XCIII
Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my credit in Men's eyes much wrong :
Have drown 'd my Glory in a shallow Cup, And sold my Reputation for a Song.
xciv
Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before I swore — but was I sober when I swore ?
And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand My thread-bare Penitence apieces tore.
22 RUBXiYXT OF OMAR KHAYYAM
XCV
And much as Wine has play'd the Infidel, And robb'd me of my Robe of Honour — Well,
I wonder often what the Vintners buy One half so precious as the stuff they sell.
xcvi
Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose ! That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close !
The Nightingale that in the branches sang, Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows !
xcvn
Would but the Desert of the Fountain yield One glimpse — if dimly, yet indeed, reveal'd,
To which the fainting Traveller might spring, As springs the trampled herbage of the field !
XCVIII
Would but some winged Angel ere too late Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of Fate,
And make the stern Recorder otherwise Enregister, or quite obliterate !
XCIX
Ah Love ! could you and I with Him conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits — and then Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire !
RUBi(lYi(T OF OMAR KHAYYAM 23
Yon rising Moon that looks for us again — How oft hereafter will she wax and wane ;
How oft hereafter rising look for us Through this same Garden — and for one in vain !
ci
And when like her, oh Saki, you shall pass Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass,
And in your blissful errand reach the spot Where I made One — turn down an empty Glass !
TAMAM.
NOTES
1 The "False Dawnj" Subhi Kazib, a transient Light on the Horizon about an hour before the Subhi sdciifc, or True Dawn; a well-known Phenomenon in the East.
2 New Year. Beginning with the Vernal Equinox, it must be remembered ; and (howsoever the old Solar Year is practically superseded by the clumsy Lunar Year that dates from the Moham- medan Hijra) still commemorated by a Festival that is said to have been appointed by the very Jamshyd whom Omar so often talks of, and whose yearly Calendar he helped to rectify.
•• The sudden approach and rapid advance of the Spring," says Mr. Binning, " are very striking. Before the Snow is well off the Ground, the Trees burst into Blossom, and the Flowers start from the Soil. At Naw Roos {their New Year's Day) the Snow was lying in patches on the Hills and in the shaded Vallies, while the Fruit-trees in the Garden were budding beautifully, and green Plants and Flowers springing upon the Plains on every side —
' And on old Hyems' Chin and icy Crown An odorous Chaplet of sweet Summer buds Is, as in mockery, set — '
Among the Plants newly appear'd I recognized some Acquain- tances I had not seen for many a Year : among these, two varieties of the Thistle : a coarse species of the Daisy, like the Horse-gowan ; red and white Clover; the Dock; the blue Corn-flower; and that vulgar Herb the Dandelion rearing its yellow crest on the Banks of the Watercourses." The Nightingale was not yet heard, for the Rose was not yet blown : but an almost identical Blackbird and Woodpecker helped to make up something of a North-country Spring.
3 Exodus iv. 6 ; where Moses draws forth his Hand — not, according to the Persians, " leprous as Snow" — but white, as our
26 NOTES
May-blossom in Spring perhaps. According to them also the Healing Power of Jesus resided in his Breath.
4 Irani, planted by King Shaddad, and now sunk somewhere in the Sands of Arabia. Jamshyd's Seven-ring'd Cup was typical of the 7 Heavens, 7 Planets, 7 Seas, &c, and was a Divining Cup.
5 PeJilevi, the old Heroic Sanskrit of Persia. Haflz also speaks of the Nightingale's Pe'hlevi, which did not change with the Peo- ple's.
6 I am not sure if this refers to the Red Rose looking sickly, or the Yellow Rose that ought to be Red ; Red, White, and Yellow Roses are all common in Persia. I think Southey, in his Common- Place Book, quotes from some Spanish author about Rose being White till 10 o'clock ; " Rosa Perfecta" at 2 ; and "perfecta incar- nada " at 5.
7 Rustum, the " Hercules" of Persia, and Zal his Father, whose exploits are among the most celebrated in the Shah-nama. Hatim Tai, a well-known Type of Oriental Generosity.
8 A Drum — beaten outside a Palace.
9 That is, the Rose's Golden Centre.
10 Persepolis : call'd also Takhfi Jamshyd — The Throne of Jamshyd, " King Splendid.'" of the mythical Peeshdddian Dy- nasty, and supposed (according to the Shah-nama) to have been founded and built by him. Others refer it to the Work of the Genie King, Jan Ibn Jan — who also built the Pyramids — before the time of Adam.
Bahram Gijr — Bahrain of the Wild Ass — a Sassanian Sov- ereign — had also his Seven Castles (like the King of Bohemia !) each of a different Colour; each with a Royal Mistress within; each of whom tells him a Story, as told in one of the most famous Poems of Persia, written by Amir Khusraw ; all these Sevens also figuring (according to Eastern Mysticism) the Seven Heavens ; and perhaps the Book itself that Eighth, into which the mystical Seven transcend, and within which they revolve. The Ruins of Three of these Towers are yet shown by the Peasantry ; as also the Swamp in which Bahram sunk, like the Master of Ravenswood, while pursuing his Gi'tr.
" The Palace that to Heav'n his pillars threw, And Kines the forehead on his threshold drew —
NOTES 27
I saw the solitary Ringdove there, And ' Coo, coo, coo,' she cried ; and ' Coo, coo, coo.' "
This Quatrain Mr. Binning found, among several of Hafiz and others, inscribed by some stray hand among the ruins of Persep- olis. The Ringdove's ancient Pelilevi Coo, Coo, Coo, signifies also in Persian " Where ? Where ? Where ? " In Attar's " Bird-parlia- ment " she is reproved by the Leader of the Birds for sitting still, and for ever harping on that one note of lamentation for her lost Yusuf.
Apropos of Omar's Red Roses in Stanza xix., I am reminded of an old English Superstition, that our Anemone Pulsatilla, or pur- ple " Basque Flower " (which grows plentifully about the Fleam Dyke, near Cambridge), grows only where Danish blood has been spilt.
11 A thousand years to each Planet.
12 Saturn, Lord of the Seventh Heaven.
13 Me-and-Thee : some dividual Existence or Personality dis- tinct from the Whole.
14 One of the Persian Poets — Attar, I think — has a pretty story about this. A thirsty Traveller dips his hand into a Spring of Water to drink from. By and by comes another who draws up and drinks from an earthen Bowl, and then departs, leaving his Bowl behind him. The first Traveller takes it up for another draught ; but is surprised to find that the same Water which had tasted sweet from his own hand tastes bitter from the earthen Bowl. But a Voice — from Heaven, I think — tells him the Clay from which the Bowl is made was once Man ; and, into whatever shape renew'd, can never lose the bitter flavour of Mortality.
15 The custom of throwing a little Wine on the ground before drinking still continues in Persia, and perhaps generally in the East. Monsieur Nicolas considers it " un signe de liberalite, et en meme temps un avertissement que le buveur doit vider sa coupe jusqua la derniere goutte.v Is it not more likely an ancient Super- stition : a Libation to propitiate Earth, or make her an Accomplice in the illicit Revel ? Or, perhaps, to divert the Jealous Eye by some sacrifice of superfluity, as with the Ancients of the West ? With Omar we see something more is signified ; the precious Liquor is
25 NOTES
not lost, but sinks into the ground to refresh the dust of some poor Wine-worshipper foregone.
Thus Hafiz, copying Omar in so many ways : " When thou drinkest Wine pour a draught on the ground. Wherefore fear the Sin which brings to another Gain ? "
16 According to one beautiful Oriental Legend, Azrael accom- plishes his mission by holding to the nostril an Apple from the Tree of Life.
This and the two following Stanzas would have been withdrawn, as somewhat de troft, from the Text but for advice which I least like to disregard.
17 From Mali to Mahi ; from Fish to Moon.
18 A Jest, of course, at his Studies. A curious mathematical Quatrain of Omar's has been pointed out to me ; the more curi- ous because almost exactly parallel'd by some Verses of Doctor Donne's, that are quoted in Izaak WTalton's Lives ! Here is Omar : " You and I are the image of a pair of compasses ; though we have two heads (sc. our feet) we have one body ; when we have fixed the centre for our circle, we bring our heads (sc. feet) together at the end." Dr. Donne : —
" If we be,two, we two are so
As stiff twin-compasses are two ; Thy Soul, the fixt foot, makes no show To move, but does if the other do.
" And though thine in the centre sit,
Yet when my other far does roam, Thine leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect as mine comes home.
" Such thou must be to me, who must
Like the other foot obliquely run ; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And me to end where I begun."
19 The Seventy-two Religions supposed to divide the World, iticluding Islamism, as some think : but others not.
20 Alluding to Sultan Mahmud's Conquest of India and its dark people.
NOTES 29
21 Fdmisi khiyaZ, a Magic-lanthorn still used in India; the cylin- drical Interior being painted with various Figures, and so lightly poised and ventilated as to revolve round the lighted Candle within.
22 A very mysterious Line in the Original : —
" O danad O danad O danad O " —
breaking off something like our Wood-pigeon's Note, which she is said to take up just where she left off.
23 Parwfn and Mushtari — The Pleiads and Jupiter.
24 This relation of Pot and Potter to man and his Maker figures far and wide in the Literature of the World, from the time of the Hebrew Prophets to the present ; when it may finally take the name of *4 Pottheism," by which Mr. Carlyle ridiculed Sterling's " Pan- theism." My Sheikh, whose knowledge flows in from all quarters, writes to me : —
" Apropos of old Omar's Pots, did I ever tell you the sentence I found in ' Bishop Pearson on the Creed ' ? ' Thus are we wholly at the disposal of His will, and our present and future condition, framed and ordered by His free, but wise and just, decrees. " Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the sanie lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonozir ? " (Rom. ix. 21.) And can that earth-artificer have a freer power over his brother potsherd (both being made of the same metal), than God hath over him, who, by the strange fecundity of His omnipotent power, first made the clay out of nothing, and then him out of that ? ' "
And again — from a very different quarter — "I had to refer the other day to Aristophanes, and came by chance on a curious Speaking-pot story in the Vespae, which I had quite forgotten.
4>i Ao/cAe <a v. "A/coue, ($ cpevy' iv ~2.vfia.pei yvvi] irore 1.1435
Kareag kyl.vov.
KaTTjyopos, Tavr iyw jxapTvpofxai.
4» t0 Oux^vos oZv ix°*v TLU' eire /jLaprvparo'
Ei6' 7] SuySapirts e?7re*/, ii va\ rav Kopav tV jiaprvpiav ravrriv idaas, iv rdxei iTriSea/uLOU sirpia, vovvav et'xes irXtiova.
30 NOTES
■• The pot calls a bystander to be a witness to his bad treatment. The woman says. ' If. by Proserpine, instead of all this " testifying '* (comp. Cuddie and his mother in " Old Mortality " !) you would buy yourself a trivet, it would show more sense in you I ' The Scholiast explains echinus as &yyos ti in Kepd/j.ov."
25 At the Close of the Fasting Month. Ramazan (which makes the Musulman unhealthy and unamiable i. the first Glimpse of the Xew Moon .who rules their division of the Year), is looked for with the utmost Anxiety, and hailed with Acclamation. Then it is that the Porter's Knot may be heard — toward the Cellar. Omar has elsewhere a pretty Quatrain about this same Moon : —
•• Be of Good Cheer — the sullen Month will die. And a young Moon requite us by and by :
Look how the Old one meagre, bent, and wan With Age and Fast, is fainting from the Sky ! ''
OMAR KHAYYAM
THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA
Omar Khayyam was born at Naishapur, in Khorasan, in the latter half of our Eleventh, and died within the First Quarter of our Twelfth Century. The slender Story of his Life is curiously twined about that of two other very considerable Figures in their Time and Country : one of whom tells the Story of all Three. This was Nizam-ul-Mulk, Vizyr to Alp Arslan the Son, and Malik Shah the Grandson, of Toghrul Beg the Tar- tar, who had wrested Persia from the feeble Successor of Mahmud the Great, and founded that Seljukian Dynasty which finally roused Europe into the Crusades. This Nizam-ul-Mulk, in his Wasiyat — or Testament — which he wrote and left as a Memorial for future Statesmen — relates the following, as quoted in the Calcutta Review, No. 59, from Mirkhond's History of the Assassins : —
" ' One of the greatest of the wise men of Khorassan was the Imam Mowaffak of Naishapur, a man highly hon- oured and reverenced, — may God rejoice his soul ; his illustrious years exceeded eighty-five, and it was the uni- versal belief that every boy who read the Koran or studied the traditions in his presence, would assuredly attain to honour and happiness. For this cause did my father send me from Tus to Naishapur with Abd-us-
52 OMAR KHAYYAM
samad, the doctor of law, that I might employ myself in study and learning under the guidance of that illustri- ous teacher. Towards me he ever turned an eye of favour and kindness, and as his pupil, I felt for him extreme affection and devotion, so that I passed four years in his service. When I first came there, I found two other pupils of mine own age newly arrived, Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-fated Ben Sabbah. Both were endowed with sharpness of wit and the highest natural powers ; and we three formed a close friendship together. When the Imam rose from his lectures, they used to join me, and we repeated to each other the lessons we had heard. Xow Omar was a native of Naishapur, while Hasan Ben Sabbah's father was one Ali, a man of austere life and practice, but heretical in his creed and doctrine. One day Hasan said to me and to Khayyam, " It is a universal belief that the pupils of the Imam Mowaffak will attain to fortune. Now, even if we all do not attain thereto, without doubt one of us will ; what then shall be our mutual pledge and bond ? " We answered, " Be it what you please." "Well," he said, " let us make a vow, that to whomsoever this for- tune falls, he shall share it equally with the rest, and reserve no preeminence for himself." "Be it so," we both replied, and on those terms we mutually pledged our words. Years rolled on, and I went from Khoras- san to Transoxiana, and wandered to Ghazni and Cabul ; and when I returned, I was invested with office, and rose to be administrator of affairs during the Sultanate of Sultan Alp Arslan.'
"He goes on to state that years passed by, and both
OMAR KHAYYAM 33
his old school-friends found him out, and came and claimed a share in his good fortune, according to the school-day vow. The Vizier was generous and kept his word. Hasan demanded a place in the govern- ment, which the Sultan granted at the Vizier's request ; but discontented with a gradual rise, he plunged into the maze of intrigue of an oriental court, and, failing in a base attempt to supplant his benefactor, he was dis- graced and fell. After many mishaps and wanderings, Hasan became the head of the Persian sect of the Ismailians, — a party of fanatics who had long mur- mured in obscurity, but rose to an evil eminence under the guidance of his strong and evil will. In a. d. 1090 he seized the castle of Alamut, in the province of Rud- bar, which lies in the mountainous tract, south of the Caspian Sea ; and it was from this mountain home he obtained that evil celebrity among the Crusaders as the OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS, and spread terror through the Mohammedan world ; and it is yet disputed whether the word Assassin, which they have left in the language of modern Europe as their dark me- morial, is derived from the hashish or opiate of hemp- leaves (the Indian bJiang), with which they maddened themselves to the sullen pitch of oriental desperation, or from the name of the founder of the dynasty, whom we have seen in his quiet collegiate days, at Naishapur. One of the countless victims of the Assassin's dagger was Nizam-ul-Mulk himself, the old school-boy friend.1
1 Some of Omar's Rubaiyat warn us of the danger of Greatness, the instability of Fortune, and while advocating Charity to all Men.- recommending us be too intimate with none. Attar makes
34 OMAR KHAYYAM
■■ Omar Khayyam also came to the Vizier to claim the -hare; but not to ask for title or office. 'The greatest boon you can confer on me,' he said, ' is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune, to spread wide the advantages of Science, and pray for vour long life and prosperity." The Vizier tells us, that, when he found Omar was really sincere in his refusal, he pressed him no further, but granted him a yearly pension of twelve hundred miiJikdls of gold from the treasury of Naishapur.
" At Naishapur thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, f busied,5 adds the Vizier, 'in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in Astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high preeminence. Under the Sul- tanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained great praise for his proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered favours upon him.'
" When Malik Shah determined to reform the calen- dar, Omar was one of the eight learned men employed to do it ; the result was the Jaldli era (so called from Jalal-u-diu. one of the king's names) — 'a computation of time,' says Gibbon, ' which surpasses the Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.' He is also the author of some astronomical tables, entitled ' Ziji-Malikshahi',' and the French have lately repub- lished and translated an Arabic Treatise of his on Algebra.
" His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies
Xizam-ul-Mulk use the very words of his friend Omar [Rub.xxviii.] ■• When N izam-ul-Mulk was in the agony (of Death) he said, * O God ! I am passing away in the hand of the Wind." '*
OMAR KHAYYAM 35
a Tent-maker, and he is said to have at one time exer- cised that trade, perhaps before Nizam-ul-Mulk's gener- osity raised him to independence. Many Persian poets similarly derive their names from their occupations ; thus we have Attar ' a druggist,' Assar 'an oil presser,' etc.1 Omar himself alludes to his name in the follow- ing whimsical lines : —
" ' Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science,
Has fallen in grief's furnace and been suddenly burned ; The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life, And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing ! '
" We have only one more anecdote to give of his Life, and that relates to the close ; it is told in the anony- mous preface which is sometimes prefixed to his poems ; it has been printed in the Persian in the appendix to Hyde's 'Veterum Persarum Religio,' p. 499; and D'Herbelot alludes to it in his Bibliotheque under KJiiam :2 —
" ' It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that this King of the Wise, Omar Khayyam, died at Naisha- pur in the year of the Hegira, 517 (a. d. 1123); in science he was unrivalled, — the very paragon of his age.' Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, who was one of his pupils, relates the following story : ' I often used to hold conversations with my teacher, Omar Khayyam, in a garden ; and one day he said to me, " My tomb shall
1 Though all these, like our Smiths, Archers, Millers, Fletchers, etc., may simply retain the Surname of an hereditary calling.
2 " Philosophe Musulman qui a vecu en Odeur de Saintete dans la Fin du premier et le Commencement du second Siecle," no part of which, except the " Philosophe," can apply to our Khayyam.
$6 OMAR KHAYYAM
be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses over it." I wondered at the words he spake, but I knew that his were no idle words.1 Years after, when I chanced to revisit Naishapur, I went to his final resting- place, and lo ! it was just outside a garden, and trees laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden wall, and dropped their flowers upon his tomb, so as the stone was hidden under them.' "
Thus far — without fear of Trespass — from the " Cal- cutta Review." The writer of it, on reading in India this story of Omar's Grave, was reminded, he says, of Cicero's Account of finding Archimedes' Tomb at Syra- cuse, buried in grass and weeds. I think Thorwaldsen desired to have roses grow over him ; a wish religiously fulfilled for him to the present day, I believe. How- ever, to return to Omar.
1 The Rashness of the Words, according to D'Herbelot. con- sisted in being so opposed to those in the Koran : " No Man knows where he shall die." — This Story of Omar reminds me of another so naturally — and, when one remembers how wide of his humble mark the noble sailor aimed — so pathetically told by Captain Cook — not by Doctor Hawkesworth — in his second voyage. When leaving Ulietea, " Oreo's last request was for me to return. When he saw he could not obtain that promise, he asked the name of my Marai — Burying-place. As strange a question as this was, I hes- itated not a moment to tell him • Stepney,' the parish in which I live when in London. I was made to repeat it several times over till they could pronounce it ; and then ' Stepney Marai no Tootee ' was echoed through a hundred mouths at once. I afterwards found the same question had been put to Mr. Forster by a man on shore ; but he gave a different, and indeed more proper answer, by saying, ' No man who used the sea could say where he should be buried.' "
OMAR KHAYYAM 37
Though the Sultan "shower'd Favours upon him," Omar's Epicurean Audacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especially hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose Practice he ridiculed, and whose faith amounts to little more than his own when stript of the Mysticism and formal recognition of Islam- ism under which Omar would not hide. Their Poets, including Hafiz, who are (with the exception of Fir- dausi) the most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar's material, but turning it to a mystical Use more convenient to Themselves and the People they addressed ; a People quite as quick of Doubt as of Belief ; as keen of Bodily Sense as of Intellectual ; and delighting in a cloudy composition of both, in which they could float luxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this World and the Xext, on the wings of a poetical expression, that might serve indifferently for either. -Omar was too honest of Heart as well as of Head for this. Having failed (however mistakenly) of finding any Providence but Destiny, and any World but This, he set about making the most of it ; preferring rather to soothe the Soul through the Senses into Acquiescence with Things as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain disquietude after what they might be. It has been seen, however, that his Worldly Ambition was not exor- bitant ; and he very likely takes a humorous or perverse pleasure in exalting the gratification of Sense above that of the Intellect, in which he must have taken co-eat delio-ht, although it failed to answer the Ouestions in which he, in common with all men, was most vitally interested.
8 OMAR KHAYYAM
For whatever Reason, however, Omar, as before said, has never been popular in his own Country, and there- fore has been but scantily transmitted abroad. The MSS. of his Poems, mutilated beyond the average Casual- ties of Oriental Transcription, are so rare in the East as scarce to have reacht Westward at all, in spite of all the acquisitions of Arms and Science. There is no copy at the India House, none at the Bibliotheque Imperi- ale of Paris. We know but of one in England : No. 140 of the Ouseley MSS. at the Bodleian, written at Shi- raz, a. d. 1460. This contains but 158 Rubaiyat. One in the Asiatic Society's Library at Calcutta (of which we have a copy) contains (and yet incomplete) 516, though swelled to that by all kinds of Repetition and Corruption. So Von Hammer speaks of his copy as containing about 200, while Dr. Sprenger catalogues the Lucknow MS. at double that number.1 The Scribes, too, of the Oxford^ and Calcutta MSS. seem to do their Work under a sort of Protest ; each beginning with a Tetrastich (whether genuine or not), taken out of its alphabetical order ; the Oxford with one of Apology ; the Calcutta with one of Expostulation, supposed (sa ys a Notice prefixed to the MS.) to have risen from a Dream, in which Omar's mother asked about his future fate. It may be rendered thus : —
'* O Thou who burn'st in Heart for those who burn
In Hell, whose fires thyself shall feed in tarn :
1 •' Since this Paper was written (adds the Reviewer in a note) we have met with a copy of a very rare Edition, printed at Calcutta in 1836. This contains 438 Terrastichs, with an Appendix containing 54 others not found in some MS 5,
omar khayyIm 39
How long be crying, ' Mercy on them, God ! ' Why, who art Thou to teach, and He to learn ? "
The Bodleian Quatrain pleads Pantheism by way of Justification : —
** If I myself upon a looser Creed Have loosely strung the Jewel of Good deed, Let this one thing for my Atonement plead : That One for Two I never did mis-read."
The Reviewer, to whom I owe the Particulars of Omar's Life, concludes his Review by comparing him with Lucretius, both as to natural Temper and Genius, and as acted upon by the Circumstances in which he lived. Both indeed were men of subtle, strong:, and cultivated Intellect, fine Imagination, and Hearts pas- sionate for Truth and Justice ; who justly revolted from their Country's false Religion, and false, or foolish, Devotion to it ; but who yet fell short of replacing what they subverted by such better Hope as others, with no better Revelation to guide them, had yet made a Law to themselves. Lucretius, indeed, with such material as Epicurus furnished, satisfied himself with the theory of so vast a machine fortuitously constructed, and acting by a Law that implied no Legislator ; and so compos- ing himself into a Stoical rather than Epicurean severity of Attitude, sat down to contemplate the mechanical Drama of the Universe which he was part Actor in ; himself and all about him (as in his own sublime de- scription of the Roman Theatre) discoloured with the lurid reflex of the Curtain suspended between the Spec- tator and the Sun. Omar, more desperate, or more
40 OMAR KHAYyXm
careless of any so complicated System as resulted in no- thing but hopeless Necessity, flung his own Genius and Learning with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Ruin which their insufficient glimpses only served to reveal ; and, pretending sensual pleasure as the serious purpose of Life, only diverted himself with speculative problems of Deity, Destiny, Matter and Spirit, Good and Evil, and other such questions, easier to start than to run down, and the pursuit of which becomes a very weary sport at last !
With regard to the present Translation. The original Rubaiyat (as, missing an Arabic Guttural, these Tetra- stichs are more musically called) are independent Stan- zas, consisting each of four Lines of equal, though varied, Prosody ; sometimes all rhyming, but oftener (as here imitated) the third line a blank. Something as in the Greek Alcaic, where the penultimate line seems to lift and suspend the Wave that falls over in the last. As usual with such kind of Oriental Verse, the Rubaiyat follow one another according to Alphabetic Rhyme — a strange succession of Grave and Gay. Those here se- lected are strung into something of an Eclogue, with perhaps a less than equal proportion of the " Drink and makenierry," which (genuine or not) recurs over-fre- quently in the Original. Either way, the Result is sad enough — saddest perhaps when most ostentatiously merry : more apt to move Sorrow than Anger toward the old Tentmaker, who, after vainly endeavouring to unshackle his Steps from Destiny, and to catch some authentic Glimpse of To-morrow, fell back upon To-day (which has outlasted so many To-morrows !) as the only
OMAR KHAYYAM 41
Ground he got to stand upon, however momentarily slipping from under his Feet.
While the second Edition of this version of Omar was preparing, Monsieur Nicolas, French Consul at Resht, published a very careful and very good Edition of the Text, from a lithograph copy at Teheran, compris- ing 464 Rubaiyat, with translation and notes of his own.
Monsieur Nicolas, whose Edition has reminded me of several things, and instructed me in others, does not consider Omar to be the material Epicurean that I have literally taken him for, but a Mystic, shadowing the Deity under the figure of Wine, Wine-bearer, etc., as Hafiz is supposed to do ; in short, a Sufi Poet like Hafiz and the rest.
I cannot see reason to alter my opinion, formed as it was more than a dozen years ago when Omar was first shown me by one to whom I am indebted for all I know of Oriental, and very much of other, literature. He admired Omar's Genius so much, that he would gladly have adopted any such Interpretation of his meaning as Monsieur Nicolas, if he could.1 That he could not, appears by his Paper in the "Calcutta Review " already so largely quoted ; in which he argues from the Poems themselves, as well as from what records remain of the Poet's Life. And if more were needed to disprove Monsieur Nicolas' theory, there is the Biographical No-
1 Perhaps would have edited the Poems himself some years ago. He may now as little approve of my Version on one side, as of Monsieur Nicolas' Theory on the other.
42 OMAR KHAYYAM
tice which he himself has drawn up in direct contradic- tion to the Interpretation of the Poems given in his Notes. (See pp. 13-14 of his Preface.) Indeed I hardly knew poor Omar was so far gone till his Apolo- gist informed me. For here we see that, whatever were the Wine that Hafiz drank and sang, the veritable Juice of the Grape it was which Omar used, not only when carousing with his friends, but (says Monsieur Nicolas) in order to excite himself to that pitch of Devotion which others reached by cries and " hurlemens." And yet, whenever Wine, Wine-bearer, etc., occur in the Text — which is often enough — Monsieur Nicolas carefully annotates "Dieu," " La Divinite," etc. : so carefully in- deed that one is tempted to think that he was indoctri- nated by the Sufi with whom he read the Poems. (Note to Rub. ii. p. 8.) A Persian would naturally wish to vindicate a distinguished Countryman ; and a Sufi to enrol him in his own sect, which already comprises all the chief Poets of Persia.
What historical Authority has Monsieur Nicolas to show that Omar gave himself up " avec passion a l'etude de la philosophic des Soufis " ? (Preface, p. xiii.) The Doctrines of Pantheism, Materialism, Necessity, etc., were not peculiar to the Sufi ; nor to Lucretius before them ; nor to Epicurus before him ; probably the very original Irreligion of Thinking men from the first ; and very likely to be the spontaneous growth of a Philosopher living in an Age of social and political barbarism, under shadow of one of the Two and Seventy Religions sup- posed to divide the world. Von Hammer (according to Sprenger's Oriental Catalogue) speaks of Omar as "a
omar khayyXm 43
Free-Thinker, and a great opponent of Sufism ; " per- haps because, while holding much of their Doctrine, he would not pretend to any inconsistent severity of morals. Sir W. Ouseley has written a Note to something of the same effect on the fly-leaf of the Bodleian MS. And in two Rubaiyat of Monsieur Nicolas' own Edition Suf and Sufi are both disparagingly named.
No doubt many of these Quatrains seem unaccountable unless mystically interpreted ; but many more as un- accountable unless literally. Were the Wine spiritual, for instance, how wash the Body with it when dead ? Why make cups of the dead clay to be filled with — " La Divinite " — by some succeeding Mystic ? Monsieur Nicolas himself is puzzled by some " bizarres " and " trop Orientales " allusions and images — " d'une sensualite quelquefois revoltante," indeed — which "les conven- ances" do not permit him to translate ; but still which the reader cannot but refer to " La Divinite. " : No doubt also many of the Quatrains in the Teheran, as in the Calcutta, Copies, are spurious ; such Rubaiyat being
1 A Note to Quatrain 234 admits that, however clear the mystical meaning of such Images must be to Europeans, they are not quoted without " rougissant " even by laymen in Persia — " Quant aux termes de tendresse qui commencent ce quatrain, comme tant d'au- tres dans ce recueil, nos lecteurs, habitues maintenant a l'etrangete des expressions si souvent employes par Kheyam pour rendre ses pensees sur l'amour divin, et a la singularity des images trop orien- tales, d'une sensualite quelquefois revoltante, n'auront pas de peine a se persuader qu'il s'agit de la Divinite, bien que cette conviction soit vivement discutee par les moullahs musulmans, et meme par beaucoup de laiques, qui rougissent veritablement d'une pareille licence de leur compatriote a l'egard des choses spirituelles."
44 OMAR KHAYYAM
the common form of Epigram in Persia. But this, at best, tells as much one way as another ; nay, the Sufi, who may be considered the Scholar and Man of Letters in Persia, would be far more likely than the careless Epicure to interpolate what favours his own view of the Poet. VI observe that very few of the more mystical Quatrains are in the Bodleian MS., which must be one of the oldest, as dated at Shiraz, a. h. 865, a. d. 1460. And this, I think, especially distinguishes Omar (I can- not help calling him by his — no, not Christian — famil- iar name) from all other Persian Poets : That, whereas with them the Poet is lost in his Song, the Man in Alle- gory and Abstraction ; we seem to have the Man — the Bonhomme — Omar himself, with all his Humours and Passions, as frankly before us as if we were really at Table with him, after the Wine had gone round.
I must say that I, for one, never wholly believed in the Mysticism of Hafiz. It does not appear there was any danger in holding and singing Sufi Pantheism, so long as the Poet made his Salaam to Mohammed at the be- o-innino- and end of his Sons:. Under such conditions Jelaluddm, Jami, Attar, and others sang ; using Wine and Beauty indeed as Images to illustrate, not as a Mask to hide, the Divinity they were celebrating. Per- haps some Allegory less liable to mistake or abuse had been better among so inflammable a People : much more so when, as some think with Hafiz and Omar, the ab- stract is not only likened to, but indentified with, the sensual Image ; hazardous, if not to the Devotee himself, yet to his weaker Brethren ; and worse for the Profane in proportion as the Devotion of the Initiated grew
OMAR KHAYYAM 45
warmer. And all for what ? To be tantalized with Images of sensual enjoyment which must be renounced if one would approximate a God, who, according to the Doctrine, is Sensual Matter as well as Spirit, and into whose Universe one expects unconsciously to merge after Death, without hope of any posthumous Beatitude in another world to compensate for all one's self-denial in this. Lucretius' blind Divinity certainly merited, and probably got, as much self-sacrifice as this of the Sufi ; and the burden of Omar's Song — if not " Let us eat" — is assuredly — "Let us drink, for To-morrow we die ! " And if Hafiz meant quite otherwise by a similiar language, he surely miscalculated when he de- voted his Life and Genius to so equivocal a Psalmody as, from his Day to this, has been said and sung by any rather than spiritual Worshippers.
However, as there is some traditional presumption, and certainly the opinion of some learned men, in fa- vour of Omar's being a Sufi, — and even something of a Saint, — those who please may so interpret his Wine and Cup-bearer. On the other hand, as there is far more historical certainty of his being a Philosopher, of scientific Insight and Ability far beyond that of the Age and Country he lived in ; of such moderate worldly Ambition as becomes a Philosopher, and such moderate wants as rarely satisfy a Debauchee ; other readers may be content to believe with me that, while the Wine Omar celebrates is simply the Juice of the Grape, he bragg'd more than he drank of it, in very Defiance perhaps of that Spiritual Wine which left its Votaries sunk in Hypocrisy or Disgust.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF
EDWARD FITZGERALD
Edward Fitzgerald, whom the world has already learned, in spite of his own efforts to remain within the shadow of anonymity, to look upon as one of the rarest poets of the century, was born at Bredfield, in Suffolk, on the 31st March, 1809. He was the third son of John Purcell, of Kilkenny, in Ireland, who, marrying Miss Mary Frances Fitzgerald, daughter of John Fitzgerald, of Williamstown, County Waterford, added that distin- guished name to his own patronymic ; and the future Omar was thus doubly of Irish extraction. (Both the families of Purcell and Fitzgerald claim descent from Norman warriors of the eleventh century.) This cir- cumstance is thought to have had some influence in at- tracting him to the study of Persian poetry, Iran and Erin being almost convertible terms in the early days of modern ethnology. After some years of primary edu- cation at the grammar school of Bury St. Edmunds, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1826, and there formed acquaintance with several young men of great abilities, most of whom rose to distinction before him, but never ceased to regard with affectionate remem- brance the quiet and amiable associate of their college days. Amongst them were Alfred Tennyson, James Spedding, William Bodham Donne, John Mitchell Kem-
48 EDWARD FITZGERALD
ble, and William Makepeace Thackeray ; and their long friendship has been touchingly referred to by the Lau- reate in dedicating his last poem to the memory of Ed- ward Fitzgerald. " Euphranor," our author's earliest printed work, affords a curious picture of his academic life and associations. Its substantial reality is evident beneath the thin disguise of the symbolical or classical names which he gives to the personages of the colloquy ; and the speeches which he puts into his own mouth are full of the humorous gravity, the whimsical and kindly philosophy, which remained his distinguishing charac- teristics till the end. This book was first published in 185 1 ; a second and a third edition were printed some years later ; all anonymous, and each of the latter two differing from its predecessor by changes in the text which were not indicated on the title-pages.
" Euphranor " furnishes a good many characterizations which would be useful for any writer treating upon Cambridge society in the third decade of this century. Kenelm Digby, the author of the " Broadstone of Honour," had left Cambridge before the time when Euphranor held his "dialogue," but he is picturesquely recollected as " a grand swarthy fellow who might have stepped out of the canvas of some knightly portrait in his father's hall — perhaps the living image of one sleep- ing under some cross-legged effigies in the church," In " Euphranor " it is easy to discover the earliest phase of the unconquerable attachment which Fitzgerald enter- tained for his college and his life-long friends, and which induced him in later days to make frequent visits to Cambridge, renewing and refreshing the old ties of cus-
EDWARD FITZGERALD 49
torn and friendship. In fact, his disposition was affec- tionate to a fault, and he betrayed his consciousness of weakness in that respect by referring playfully at times to "a certain natural lubricity" which he attributed to the Irish character, and professed to discover especially in himself. This amiability of temper endeared him to many friends of totally dissimilar tastes and qualities ; and, by enlarging his sympathies, enabled him to enjoy the fructifying influence of studies pursued in com- munion with scholars more profound than himself, but less gifted with the power of expression. One of the younger Cambridge men with whom he became intimate during his periodical pilgrimages to the university was Edward B. Cowell, a man of the highest attainment in Oriental learning, who resembled Fitzgerald himself in the possession of a warm and genial heart, and the most unobtrusive modesty. From Cowell he could easily learn that the hypothetical affinity between the names of Erin and Iran belonged to an obsolete stage of etymology ; but the attraction of a far-fetched theory was replaced by the charm of reading Persian poetry in companionship with his young friend, who was equally competent to enjoy and to analyse the beauties of a lit- erature that formed a portion of his regular studies. They read together the poetical remains of Khayyam — a choice of reading which sufficiently indicates the depth and range of Mr. Cowell' s knowledge. Omar Khayyam, although not quite forgotten, enjoyed in the history of Persian literature a celebrity like that of Occleve and Gower in our own. In the many Tazkirdt (memoirs or memorials) of Poets, he was mentioned and quoted with
5<D EDWARD FITZGERALD
esteem ; but his poems, labouring as they did under the original sin of heresy and atheism, were seldom looked at, and from lack of demand on the part of readers, had become rarer than those of most other writers since the days of Firdausi. European scholars knew little of his works beyond his Arabic treatise on Algebra, and Mr. Cowell may be said to have disentombed his poems from oblivion. Now, thanks to the fine taste of that scholar, and to the transmuting genius of Fitzgerald, no Persian poet is so well known in the western world as Abu-'l-fat'h 'Omar son of Ibrahim the Tentmaker of Naishapur, whose manhood synchronises with the Norman conquest of England, and who took for his poetic name (takkailus) the designation of his father's trade (Khayyam). The Rnbdiyydt (Quatrains) do not compose a single poem divided into a certain number of stanzas ; there is no continuity of plan in them, and each stanza is a distinct thought expressed in musical verse. There is no other element of unity in them than the general tendency of the Epicurean idea, and the arbitrary divan form by which they are grouped according to the alphabetical arrangement of the final letters ; those in which the rhymes end in a constituting the first division, those with b the second, and so on. The peculiar attitude towards religion and the old questions of fate, immor- tality, the origin and the destiny of man, which educated thinkers have assumed in the present age of Christen- dom, is found admirably foreshadowed in the fantastic verses of Khayyam, who was no more of a Mohammedan than many of our best writers are Christians. His philosophical and Horatian fancies — graced as they are
EDWARD FITZGERALD 5 1
by the charms of a lyrical expression equal to that of Horace, and a vivid brilliance of imagination to which the Roman poet could make no claim — exercised a powerful influence upon Fitzgerald's mind, and coloured his thoughts to such a degree that even when he over- steps the largest license allowed to a translator, his phrases reproduce the spirit and manner of his original with a nearer approach to perfection than would appear possible. It is usually supposed that there is more of Fitzgerald than of Khayyam in the English Rubdiyydt, and that the old Persian simply afforded themes for the Anglo-Irishman's display of poetic power ; but nothing could be further from the truth. The French translator, J. B. Nicolas, and the English one, Mr. Whinfield, supply a closer mechanical reflection of the sense in each separate stanza ; but Mr. Fitzgerald has, in some instances, given a version equally close and exact ; in others, rejointed scattered phrases from more than one stanza of his original, and thus accomplished a feat of marvellous poetical transfusion. He frequently turns literally into English the strange outlandish imagery which Mr. Whinfield thought necessary to replace by more intelligible banalities, and in this way the magic of his genius has successfully transplanted into the garden of English poesy exotics that bloom like native flowers. One of Mr. Fitzgerald's Woodbridge friends was Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, with whom he main- tained for many years the most intimate and cordial intercourse, and whose daughter Lucy he married. He wrote the memoir of his friend's life which appeared in the posthumous volume of Barton's poems. The story
52 EDWARD FITZGERALD
of his married life was a short one. With all the over- flowing amiability of his nature, there were mingled cer- tain peculiarities or waywardnesses which were more suitable to the freedom of celibacy than to the staid- ness of matrimonial life. A separation took place by mutual agreement, and Fitzgerald behaved in this cir- cumstance with the generosity and unselfishness which were apparent in all his whims no less than in his more deliberate actions. Indeed, his entire career was marked by an unchanging goodness of heart and a genial kindliness ; and no one could complain of having ever endured hurt or ill-treatment at his hands. His pleasures were innocent and simple. Amongst the more delightful, he counted the short coasting trips, occupying no more than a day or two at a time, which he used to make in his own yacht from Lowestoft, accompanied only by a crew of two men, and such a friend as Cowell, with a large pasty and a few bottles of wine to supply their material wants. It is needless to say that books were also put into the cabin, and that the symposia of the friends were thus brightened by communion with the minds of the great departed. Fitzgerald's enjoyment of gnomic wisdom enshrined in words of exquisite propriety was evinced by the fre- quency with which he used to read Montaigne's essays and Madame de Sevigne's letters, and the various works from which he extracted and published his col- lection of wise saws entitled "Polonius." This taste was allied to a love for what was classical and correct in literature, by which he was also enabled to appre- ciate the prim and formal muse of Crabbe, in whose grandson's house he died.
EDWARD FITZGERALD 53
His second printed work was the "Polonius," already referred to, which appeared in 1852. It exemplifies his favourite reading, being a collection of extracts, sometimes short proverbial phrases, sometimes longer pieces of characterization or reflection, arranged under abstract headings. He occasionally quotes Dr. John- son, for whom he entertained sincere admiration ; but the ponderous and artificial fabric of Johnsonese did not please him like the language of Bacon, Fuller, Sir Thomas Browne, Coleridge, whom he cites frequently. A disproportionate abundance of wise words was drawn from Carlyle ; his original views, his forcible sense, and the friendship with which Fitzgerald regarded him, having apparently blinded the latter to the ungainly style and ungraceful mannerisms of the Chelsea sage. (It was Thackeray who first made them personally acquainted forty years ago ; and Fitzgerald remained always loyal to his first instincts of affection and admir- ation.1) " Polonius " also marks the period of his earliest attention to Persian studies, as he quotes in it the great Sufi poet Jalal-ud-din-Rumi, whose masnavi has lately been translated into English by Mr. Redhouse,
1 The close relation that subsisted between Fitzgerald and Car- lyle has lately been made patent by an article in the Historical Review upon the Squire papers, — those celebrated documents purporting to be contemporary records of Cromwell's time, — which were accepted by Carlyle as genuine, but which other scholars have asserted from internal evidence to be modern forgeries. However the question may be decided, the fact which concerns us here is that our poet was the negotiator between Mr. Squire and Carlyle, and that his correspondence with the latter upon the subject reveals the intimate nature of their acquaintance.
54 EDWARD FITZGERALD
but whom Fitzgerald can only have seen in the original. He, however, spells the name Jallaladin, an incorrect form of which he could not have been guilty at the time when he produced Omar Khayyam, and which thus betrays that he had not long been engaged with Irani literature. He was very fond of Montaigne's essays, and of Pascal's " Pensees ; " but his " Polonius " reveals a sort of dislike and contempt for Voltaire. Amongst the Germans, Jean Paul, Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt, and August Wilhelm von Schlegel at- tracted him greatly ; but he seems to have read little German, and probably only quoted translations. His favourite motto was " Plain Living and High Think- ing," and he expresses great reverence for all things manly, simple, and true. The laws and institutions of England were, in his eyes, of the highest value and sacredness ; and whatever Irish sympathies he had would never have, diverted his affections from the Union to Home Rule. This is strongly illustrated by some original lines of blank verse at the end of " Polo- nius," annexed to his quotation, under "^Esthetics," of the words in which Lord Palmerston eulogised Mr. Gladstone for having devoted his Neapolitan tour to an inspection of the prisons.
Fitzgerald's next printed work was a translation of Six Dramas of Calderon, published in 1853, which was unfavourably received at the time, and consequently withdrawn by him from circulation. His name ap- peared on the title-page, — a concession to publicity which was so unusual with him that it must have been made under strong pressure from his friends. The
EDWARD FITZGERALD 55
book is in nervous blank verse, a mode of composition which he handled with great ease and skill. There is no waste of power in diffuseness and no employment of unnecessary epithets. It gives the impression of a work of the Shakespearean age, and reveals a kindred felicity, strength, and directness of language. It de- serves to rank with his best efforts in poetry, but its ill-success made him feel that the publication of his name was an unfavourable experiment, and he never again repeated it. His great modesty, however, would sufficiently account for this shyness. Of " Omar Khay- yam," even after the little book had won its way to general esteem, he used to say that the suggested addition of his name on the title would imply an assumption of importance which he considered that his "transmogrification" of the Persian poet did not possess.
Fitzgerald's conception of a translator's privilege is well set forth in the prefaces of his versions from Cal- deron, and the Agamemnon of /Eschylus. He main- tained that, in the absence of the perfect poet, who shall re-create in his own language the body and soul of his original, the best system is that of a paraphrase conserving the spirit of the author, — a sort of liter- ary metempsychosis. Calderon, ^Eschylus, and Omar Khayyam were all treated with equal license, so far as form is concerned, — the last, perhaps, the most arbi- trarily ; but the result is not unsatisfactory as having given us perfect English poems instinct with the true flavour of their prototypes. The Persian was probably somewhat more Horatian and less melancholy, the
56 EDWARD FITZGERALD
Greek a little less florid and mystic, the Spaniard more lyrical and fluent, than their metaphrast has made them ; but the essential spirit has not escaped in trans- fusion. Only a man of singular gifts could have per- formed the achievement, and these works attest Mr. Fitzgerald's right to rank amongst the finest poets of the century. About the same time as he printed his Calderon, another set of translations from the same dramatist was published by the late D. F. MacCairthy ; a scholar whose acquaintance with Castilian literature was much deeper than Mr. Fitzgerald's, and who also possessed poetical abilities of no mean order, with a totally different sense of the translator's duty. The popularity of MacCarthy's versions has been consider- able, and as an equivalent rendering of the original in sense and form his work is valuable. Spaniards familiar with the English language rate its merit highly ; but there can be little question of the very great su- periority of Mr. Fitzgerald's work as a contribution to English literature. It is indeed only from this point of view that we should regard all the literary labours of our author. They are English poetical work of fine quality, dashed with a pleasant outlandish flavour which heightens their charm : and it is as English poems, not as translations, that they have endeared themselves even more to the American English than to the mixed Britons of England.
It was an occasion of no small moment to Mr. Fitz- gerald's fame, and to the intellectual gratification of many thousands of readers, when he took his little packet of Rubaiyydt to Mr. Ouaritch in the latter part
EDWARD FITZGERALD 57
of the year 1858. It was printed as a small quarto pamphlet, bearing the publisher's name but not the author's ; and although apparently a complete failure at first, — a failure which Mr. Fitzgerald regretted less on his own account than on that of his publisher, to whom he had generously made a present of the book, — re- ceived, nevertheless, a sufficient distribution by being quickly reduced from the price of five shillings and placed in the box of cheap books marked a penny each. Thus forced into circulation, the two hundred copies which had been printed were soon exhausted. Among the buyers were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mr. Swinburne, Captain (now Sir Richard) Burton, and Mr. William Simpson, the accomplished artist of the " Illustrated Lon- don News." The influence exercised by the first three, especially by Rossetti, upon a clique of young men who have since grown to distinction, was sufficient to attract observation to the singular beauties of the poem anony- mously translated from the Persian. Most readers had no possible opportunity of discovering whether it was a disguised original or an actual translation ; — even Cap- tain Burton enjoyed probably but little chance of seeing a manuscript of the Persian Ruba'iyyat. The Oriental imagery and allusions were too thickly scattered through- out the verses to favour the notion that they could be the original work of an Englishman ; yet it was shrewdly suspected by most of the appreciative readers that the "translator" was substantially the author and creator of the poem. In the refuge of his anonymity, Fitz- gerald derived an innocent gratification from the curi- osity that was aroused on all sides. After the first
58 EDWARD FITZGERALD
edition had disappeared, inquiries for the little book be- came frequent, and in the year 1868 he gave the MS. of his second edition to Mr. Ouaritch, and the Rubaiyyat came into circulation once more, but with several alter- ations and additions by which the number of stanzas was somewhat increased beyond the original seventy- five. Most of the changes were, as might have been expected, improvements ; but in some instances the author's taste or caprice was at fault, — notably in the Rubaiy. His fastidious desire to avoid anything that seemed baroque or unnatural, or appeared like plagiarism, may have influenced him ; but it was probably because he had already used the idea in his rendering of J ami's Salaman, that he sacrificed a fine and novel piece of imagery in his first stanza and replaced it by one of much more ordinary character. If it were from a dislike to pervert his original too largely, he had no need to be so scrupulous, since he dealt on the whole with the Ru- ba'ivvat as though he had the license of absolute author- ship, changing, transposing, and manipulating the sub- stance of the Persian quatrains with singular freedom. The vogue of "old Omar" (as he would affectionately call his work) went on increasing, and American readers took it up with eagerness. In those days, the mere mention of Omar Khayyam between two strangers meeting fortuitously acted like a sign of free-masonry and established frequently a bond of friendship. Some curious instances of this have been related. A remark- able feature of the Omar-cult in the United States was the circumstance that single individuals bought numbers of copies for gratuitous distribution before the book was
EDWARD FITZGERALD 59
reprinted in America. Its editions have been relatively numerous, when we consider how restricted was the circle of readers who could understand the peculiar beauties of the work. A third edition appeared in 1872, with some further alterations, and may be regarded as virtually the author's final revision, for it hardly differs at all from the text of the fourth edition, which ap- peared in 1879. This last formed the first portion of a volume entitled " Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam ; and the Salaman and Absal of Jami ; rendered into English verse." The Salaman (which had already been printed in separate form in 1856) is a poem chiefly in blank verse, interspersed with various metres (although it is all in one measure in the original ) embodying a love- story of mystic significance ; for Jami was, unlike Omar Khayyam, a true Sufi, and indeed differed in other re- spects, his celebrity as a pious Mussulman doctor being equal to his fame as a poet. He lived in the fifteenth century, in a period of literary brilliance and decay ; and the rich exuberance of his poetry, full of far-fetched con- ceits, involved expressions, overstrained imagery, and false taste, offers a strong contrast to the simpler and more forcible language of Khayyam. There is little use of Arabic in the earlier poet ; he preferred the ver- nacular speech to the mongrel language which was fashionable among the heirs of the Saracen conquer- ors; but Jamf's composition is largely embroidered with Arabic.
Mr. Fitzgerald had from his early days been thrown into contact with the Crabbe family ; the Reverend George Crabbe (the poet's grandson) was an intimate
00 EDWARD FITZGERALD
friend of his. and it was on a visit to Morton Rectory that Fitzgerald died. As we know that friendship has power to warp the judgment, we shall not probably be wrong in supposing that his enthusiastic admiration for Crabbe's poems was not the product of sound, impartial criticism. He attempted to reintroduce them to the world bv publishing a little volume of " Readings from Crabbe." produced in the last vear of his life, but with- out success. A different fate awaited his "Agamem- non : a tragedy taken from -Eschylus." which was first printed privatelv by him. and afterwards published with alterations in iS~6. It is a very free rendering from the Greek, and full of a poetical beauty which is but partly assignable to .Eschylus. Without attaining to anything like the celebrity and admiration which have followed Omar Khayyam, the Agamemnon has achieved much more than a w.vA d'esiime. Air. Fitzgerald's render- ings from the Greejk were not confined to this one essay ; he also translated the two CEdipus dramas of Sophocles. but left them unfinished in manuscript till Prof. Charles Eliot Xorton had a sight of them about seven or eight years ago and urged him to complete his work. When this was done, he had them set in type, but only a very few proofs cm have been struck off. as it seems that, at least in England, no more than one or two copies were sent out bv the author. In a similar way he printed translations of two of Calderon's plavs not included in the published "Six Dramas" — namely, La Vida es S:.:r::, and E! ILigico Prodigioso (both ranking among the Spaniard's finest work : ^ but thev also were withheld from the public and all but half a dozen friends.
EDWARD FITZGERALD 6 1
When his old boatman died, about ten years ago, he abandoned his nautical exercises and gave up his yacht for ever. During the last few years of his life, he divided his time between Cambridge, Crabbe's house, and his own home at Little Grange, near Woodbridge, where he received occasional visits from friends and relatives. His best epitaph is found in Tennyson's " Tiresias and Other Poems," published immediately after our author's quiet exit from life, in 1883, in the seventy-fifth year of his age M. K.
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