This stanza may mean wine,—it may mean any strong purpose, or intense emotion that takes possession of our life,—that makes us its devoted slave, anxious to dare or suffer for the privilege of enlisting in a cause. That Omar knew something of life’s pleasures and realities, besides the wine he lauded, is apparent from his work. His insight was so deep that he could not be deceived by the tinsel and glitter and trappings that make up the vain show with which men deceive others, and attempt to beguile themselves. In Persia eight hundred years ago, there were probably no twenty-story buildings, no railroads, nor street cars, nor telegraph wires; perhaps no chambers of commerce, nor banks; but no doubt these old Mohammedans had much as useless and vain and artificial as these inventions of a later day. There was then, as now, the master with all the false luxury that idleness could create in that land and time; there was also, as to-day, the hopeless slave, whose only purpose on the earth was to minister to the parasite and knave; and both of these, master and man alike, were helpless prisoners in the schemes and devices, the machinery and inventions, the worthless appendages and appliances that bound and enslaved them, and that have held the world with ever increasing strength to the present day. But Omar knew that all of this was a delusion and a snare;—that it failed of the purpose that it meant to serve. He turned from these vanities to a simpler, saner life, and found the sweetest and most lasting pleasures close to the heart of that great nature, to which man must return from all his devious wanderings, like the lost child that comes back to its mother’s breast. What simpler and higher happiness has all the artificial civilization of the world been able to create than this: 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. It is these bright spots in life’s desert that make us long to stay. These hours of friendship and close companionship of congenial souls that seem the only pleasures that are real, and from which no regrets can come. It is away from the bustle and glare of the world, above its petty strifes, and its cruel taunts, in the quiet and trust of true comradeship, that we forget the evil and fall in love with life. And our old philosopher, with all his pessimism, with all his doubts and disappointments, knew that here was the greatest peace and happiness that weary, mortal man could know. In the presence of the friends he loved, and the comradeship of congenial lives, he could not but regret the march of time and the flight of years, which heralded the coming of the end. Poor Omar was like all the rest that ever lived—he looked forward into the dark, unknown sea, and shuddered as he felt the rising water on his feet.