Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, Rendered into English VerseOmar Khayyam
GeneralSufism
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, Rendered into English Verse
Omar Khayyam
Persian poetry -- Translations into English
"Oh Thou who burn'st in Heart for those who burn
In Hell, whose fires thyself shall feed in turn;
How long be crying, 'Mercy on them, God!'
Why, who art Thou to teach, and He to learn?"
The Bodleian Quatrain pleads Pantheism by way of Justification.
"If I myself upon a looser Creed
Have loosely strung the Jewel of Good deed,
Let this one thing for my Atonement plead:
That One for Two I never did misread."
The Reviewer to whom I owe the Particulars of Omar's Life concludes his
Review by comparing him with Lucretius, both as to natural Temper and
Genius, and as acted upon by the Circumstances in which he lived. Both
indeed were men of subtle, strong, and cultivated Intellect, fine
Imagination, and Hearts passionate for Truth and Justice; who justly
revolted from their Country's false Religion, and false, or foolish,
Devotion to it; but who fell short of replacing what they subverted by
such better _Hope_ as others, with no better Revelation to guide them,
had yet made a Law to themselves. Lucretius indeed, with such material
as Epicurus furnished, satisfied himself with the theory of a vast
machine fortuitously constructed and acting by a Law that implied no
Legislator; and so composing himself into a Stoical rather than
Epicurean severity of Attitude, sat down to contemplate the mechanical
Drama of the Universe which he was part Actor in; himself and all about
him (as in his own sublime description of the Roman Theatre) discolored
with the lurid reflex of the Curtain suspended between the Spectator and
the Sun. Omar, more desperate, or more careless of any so complicated
System as resulted in nothing but hopeless Necessity, flung his own
Genius and Learning with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Ruin
which their insufficient glimpses only served to reveal; and, pretending
sensual pleasure, as the serious purpose of Life, only _diverted_
himself with speculative problems of Deity, Destiny, Matter and Spirit,
Good and Evil, and other such questions, easier to start than to run
down, and the pursuit of which becomes a very weary sport at last!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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