Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life’s Liquor in its Cup be dry.
Wine! Wine! Wine!– the Nightingale cries to the Rose
Red Wine!
How sweet is mortal Sovranty!– think some:
How blest the Paradise to come!
Lo,she says,
Laughing,
into the world I blow:
At once the silken Tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw.
I came like Water, and like Wind I go.
What Lamp had Destiny to guide
Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?
A blind Understanding!Heav’n replied.
While you live
Drink!–for once dead you never shall return.
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?
Surely not in vain
My Substance from the common Earth was ta’en,
That He who subtly wrought me into Shape
Should stamp me back to common Earth again.
Why, ne’er a peevish Boy,
Would break the Bowl from which he drank in Joy;
Shall He that made the Vessel in pure Love
And Fansy, in an after Rage destroy!
They sneer at me for leaning all awry;
What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?
Omar Khayyam was born in Naishapur, the provincial capital of Khorasan, in Iran and achieved fame as a mathematician and astronomer.
Omar Khayyam’s ten books include four books on mathematics, one on algebra, one on geometry, three on physics and three on metaphysics. He made great contributions in the development of mathematics and analytical geometry and was one the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period.
Khayyam was also a philosopher, physician and poet. Although the first allusion to him as a poet comes over forty years after his death, his fame as a mathematician has now been partially eclipsed by his popularity as a poet.
Khayyam became more popularly known in the Western world when Edward FitzGerald published an English translation of his Rubaiyat (quatrains) in 1859. The Pre-Raphaelite circle, including DG Rossetti ‘rediscovered’ the Rubaiyat in 1861, which has since become one of the classics of world literature.
Born in Bredfield, Suffolk, to a wealthy Anglo-Irish family, FitzGerald followed no profession; his lifelong interest was in friendship. FitzGerald never thought himself as a writer and his publications were occasional and almost anonymous. His published books include Euphranor [1851] and Polonius [1852].
FitzGerald studied Persian literature with Professor Edward Byles Cowell in 1853. In 1857, Cowell discovered a set of Persian quatrains by Omar Khayyam and sent them to FitzGerald. The name with which he has been so closely identified first occurs in FitzGerald’s correspondence – "Hafiz and Omar Khayyam ring like true metal."
Edward FitzGerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat, indeed, is a poetic masterpiece in its own right, which cannot be diminished by the premise that it is a ‘translation’.
