Kayyam

Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet, renowned in his own country and time for his scientific achievements but chiefly known to English-speaking readers through the translation of a collection of his rubiayat (quatrains – four line verses) of which composed over one thousand.

The verses translated by FitzGerald and others reveal a man of deep thought, troubled by the questions of the nature of reality and the eternal, the impermanence and uncertainty of life, and man's relationship to God. The writer doubts the existence of divine providence and the afterlife, derides religious certainty, and feels keenly man's frailty and ignorance. Finding no acceptable answers to his perplexities, he chooses to put his faith instead in a joyful appreciation of the fleeting and sensuous beauties of the material world. The idyllic nature of the modest pleasures he celebrates, however, cannot dispel his honest and straightforward brooding over fundamental metaphysical questions.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit,

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

ooo000ooo

Get up my sweetest, it is dawn,

Gently, gently sip the wine and twang the harp,

For not a soul will remain of those here,

And of those gone, non will return.

ooo000ooo

If you drink wine, do it with men of sense,

Or drink with a tulip-cheeked paragon of girlhood;

Don't overdo it, or make it your constant refrain,

or give the show away,

Drink in moderation, occasionally, and in private.

ooo000ooo

I cannot hide what stands out a mile,

I cannot tell the mysteries of Time;

My intellect dredges from thought's ocean

A pearl which I fear to thread.

ooo000ooo

It is we who are the source of our own happiness,

the mine of our own sorrow,

The repository of justice and foundation of iniquity;

We who are cast down and exalted, perfect and defective,

At once the rusted mirror and Jamshid's1 all seeing cup.

ooo000ooo

If chance supplied a loaf of white bread,

Two casks of wine and a leg of mutton,

In the corner of a garden with a tulip-cheeked girl

There'd be enjoyment no Sultan could outdo.

ooo000ooo

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,

Whereunder crawling coop’t we live and die,

Lift not thy hands to It for help—for It

Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

ooo000ooo

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before

The Tavern shouted— “Open then the Door!

You know how little time we have to stay,

And once departed, may return no more.”

ooo000ooo

1 To the Persian Culture hero Jamshid was attributed a magic cup , in which he could see time past, present and future and all the world, and by which he could divine.