For this week and the next four weeks I am looking at the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam as translated by Edward Fitzgerald in his first edition of the translation.
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light.
- Omar Khayyam (1048—1131), translated by Edward Fitzgerald (1809—1883)
Poem 303. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, First Edition (Quatrains 1 to 15)
I.
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light.
II.
Dreaming when Dawn’s Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,
“Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life’s Liquor in its Cup be dry.”
III.
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,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the WHITE HAND OF MOSES on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.
V.
Iram indeed is gone with all its Rose,
And Jamshyd’s Sev’n-ring’d Cup where no one knows;
But still the Vine her ancient Ruby yields,
And still a Garden by the Water blows.
VI.
And David’s Lips are lock’t; but in divine
High piping Pelevi, with “Wine! Wine! Wine!
Red Wine!”—the Nightingale cries to the Rose
That yellow Cheek of hers to’incarnadine.
VII.
Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.
VIII.
And look—a thousand Blossoms with the Day
Woke—and a thousand scatter’d into Clay:
And this first Summer Month that brings the Rose
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away.
IX.
But come with old Khayyam, and leave the Lot
Of Kaikobad and Kaikhosru forgot:
Let Rustum lay about him as he will,
Or Hatim Tai cry Supper—heed them not.
X.
With me along some Strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave and Sultan scarce is known,
And pity Sultan Mahmud on his Throne.
XI.
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
XII.
“How sweet is mortal Sovranty!”—think some
Others—“How blest the Paradise to come!”
Ah, take the Cash in hand and waive the Rest;
Oh, the brave Music of a distant Drum!
XIII.
Look to the Rose that blows 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.”
XIV.
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes—or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two—is gone.
XV.
And those who husbanded the Golden Grain,
And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn’d
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam is a quite liberal interpretation of a series of quatrains (rubāʿiyāt, four-line verses written in Persian) generally attributed to the 11th to 12th Century astronomer and mathematician Omar Khayyam, though there has been much debate over the authenticity of this association.
Regardless of this debate, Edward Fitzgerald paraphrased and freely translated the quatrains to create an original poem loosely based on the original Persian. He made five attempts at the poem, of which I have chosen the first edition since it is the one I like the best (the other editions are available online). This edition is also the shortest rendering of the poem at 75 quatrains (later editions have around 100), so I have split it into five parts of roughly equal length.
The general thrust of Fitzgerald’s verse is “seize the day”—like Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”, he exhorts his listeners to make the most of the present time and enjoy the comforts on hand rather than awaiting some future reward as they come to the same thing once one is dead.
The first quatrain is one of my favourites: the breaking dawn characterised as a stone flung into a bowl of water, disrupting the placid reflection of the starlit sky and the Sun, personified as “the Hunter of the East” with its early-morning light catching the Sultan’s turret “in a Noose of Light”.
In the second quatrain, we see that we are inside a dream and a voice from “within the Tavern” (where else) calls for those around to “fill the Cup/Before Life’s Liquor in its Cup be dry”—in other words to make the most of “Life’s Liquor” before it is lost and the cup dries up.
The third quatrain shifts to show us a crowd outside the tavern demanding entrance since they (like everyone) have only a little time to spend and cannot return once they are gone—here Fitgerald uses a stop at an inn before a journey as a metaphor for enjoying life since there is no coming back from the shores of death.
We now see the coming of the New Year and the flight of the “thoughtful Soul to Solitude” while others make merry. In this quiet sanctum, Moses extinguishes the fire on the burning bush and Jesus himself sighs heavily—I think this suggests that these two great Biblical figures are regretting this seclusion.
The poem mentions lost Iram (a place, region or tribe denounced in the Quran as having transgressed and spread corruption and having been destroyed by the Lord)—“gone with all its Rose” and the Cup of Jamshyd: a divination cup associated with the mythological figure Jamshyd or Jamshid—all seven heavens could be seen through the cup which might explain the “seven rings” though it is as lost as Iram. In the next lines, these once-great treasures are discarded since there is still red wine to drink “the Vine her ancient Ruby yields” and waterside gardens to appreciate: things of greater value since they are present.
The next quatrain emphasises this: “David’s Lips are lock’t” — another Biblical figure, David, makes an appearance though it is purely to show us that despite his renowned sagacity, he can tell us nothing now; the nightingale, however, shows us the way with its piping call of “Wine! Wine! Wine! Red Wine!” crying to the yellow rose in Pehlevi (middle Persian) to partake and redden its jaundiced petals.
Once again, we are called to “fill the Cup” and discard our penitence for past sins (the Winter Garment of Repentance) now that Spring has arrived. The brevity of existence is compared to a bird’s brief flight and the poem urges alacrity since “Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.”
The advent of Spring is marked by “a thousand Blossoms” waking with the Day and scattering their seeds into the ground, and the coming of the roses in the summer erases thoughts of the mythical Jamshyd and Kaikobad (Kay Qobad, another Iranian mythological figure), just as the roses themselves will fall to dust in their turn.
We are encouraged to forget these mythical figures: Kay Qobad and his successor Kaikhosru (Kay Khosrow, associated with the Cup of Jamshyd which is also called the Cup of Kay Khosrow since he was supposedly the only person to use it), Rustam, the Iranian equivalent of the Greek hero Heracles, and Hatim Tai, a proverbially generous sixth century Arab ruler, are all dismissed in favour of finding a quiet spot with “old Khayyam.”
He expands on this quiet spot in the tenth quatrain, describing it as the margin between the fertile lands and the barren desert: a place where even the names of the lowliest and the highest are meaningless and in such contentment, one might even pity the Sultan Mahmud his pomp.
Quatrain eleven is probably one of the best-known, speaking of the simple pleasures to enjoy a book of verse with bread and wine to hand in the company of your beloved, singing. Even if they were in the wilderness, this would be close enough to Paradise.
The twelfth quatrain dismisses those who seek mundane power and sovereignty and those who seek for satisfaction in the promise of an afterlife—it is better to “take the Cash in hand and waive the Rest” accepting that which we can possess immediately in lieu of promises that may be empty and ever listening for the drums that beat a rhythm of life.
In the next quatrain, he takes roses blowing in the breeze as an example: rather than guarding their treasure of petals closely, they cast them on the garden to enrich all by the sight. The idea that they laugh as they do so is reminiscent of Wordsworth’s daffodils dancing in the wind.
Once again, he warns against hoping for a distant future that may come to nothing as likely as prospering—and even if it prospers, it may only be like snow on the desert that lingers for an hour or two before melting away.
The fifteenth quatrain reminds us that whether we store and guard our grain or cast it abroad to fall where it will, we ourselves come to the same end and like the grain, we are buried in the mundane earth that Men will eventually dig again for food or profit.
I like this part of the Rubaiyat because it expresses the sentiment that we should live for the moment and enjoy our lives.