'It is the moon, _I ken her horn_, That's blinkin' in the lift sae hie; She shines sae bricht to wyle us hame, But by my sooth she'll wait a wee! We are na fou, we're no that fou, But just a drappie in our ee; The _Cock may craw_, the day may daw, And aye we'll taste the barley bree!' We are sorry to believe, notwithstanding Mr. Fitzgerald's rather lame and halting Apology, that it became, more and more, a confirmed habit; and that 'willy-nilly' the old Nature-tyrant had it out with him too. Alas! that it should so often be so with these genial poetic souls-poets, who in their youth 'begin in gladness, and thereof in the end doth come Despondency and Madness'! In vain does the much-admired Translator protest; for again he shows poor parched old Khayyám 'by the Tavern Door _agape_'!; the Nightingale only pipes to him 'Wine! Wine! Wine!'; his burden of Clay 'with long Oblivion is gone _dry_'!; his last hope and only prayer is: 'Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide, And _wash the Body_ whence the Life has died'; and his last word and the final horror is—'an _empty_ Glass!' But he is much more candid in his 'cups' than his ingenious Translator, as all such are wont at a certain stage to be; for he quite frankly tells us his Rule of Life: 'Drink!—for once dead you never shall return!' Nay, he takes us, in the most friendly way and with irresistible candour, into his most intimate confidence, and informs us how and when, and how deliberately, when he found out 'the sorry Scheme of Things,' his glorified new Creed and boasted new Life came about:— 'You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse I made a Second Marriage in my house; Divorced _old barren Reason_ from my Bed, And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse!' And what _possibly_ could come of it, but what _did_ come? When it could no longer be disputed that the Day _was_ dawning, _then_ the Reckoning _must_ be settled, and his last leering grin is for his drunken boon-companions, now alas! ignominiously low:— 'Landlady, count the lawin', The Day is near the dawin'; _Ye're a' blind drunk, boys, And I'm but jolly fou_. Hey tutti, taiti, How tutti, taiti— _Wha's fou now?_' O ye self-blinded, neurotic Votaries of the Omar Khayyám Cult, be warned in time: for be sincerely assured that on counting 'the lawin', Paying the Reckoning will be all that you will ever get, even at your drunkest, out of this bankrupt, blustering, purblind Braggart! To crown all his fatal Candour, Omar insists, as with a sigh of vain regret, on most truly telling us his own callous judgment of it all, seeing some faint inextinguishable spark of Conscience still remained in him, as in the Ancient Mariner:— 'Indeed the Idols I have loved so long Have done my credit in this World much wrong: Have _drown'd my Glory in a shallow Cup And sold my Reputation for a song_!'