Selections from
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Written 1120 AD)
(See
full text of The Rubaiyat)
I
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.
VII
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance
fling:
The Bird of Time bas but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird
is on the Wing.
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!
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.
XXXV
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."
LXXI
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.
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!