«Be of Good Cheer--the sullen Month will die, And a young Moon requite us by and by: Look how the Old one, meagre, bent, and wan With Age and Fast, is fainting from the Sky!» AN ANALYSIS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD'S TRANSLATION OF THE QUATRAINS OF OMAR KHAYYAM (_Fifth Edition_) By EDWARD HERON-ALLEN PREFACE The object with which this volume has been compiled has been to set at rest, once and for ever, the vexed question of how far Edward FitzGerald's incomparable poem may be regarded as a translation of the Persian originals, how far as an adaptation, and how far as an original work. In the Introduction to my recently published translation of the Ouseley MS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and more particularly in the Essay which terminates the second edition of that work, I have dwelt at considerable length upon the history of Edward FitzGerald's poem and the influences of various Oriental works which are traceable in it. As it is doubtful whether the present volume will reach the hands of, or at any rate be critically considered by, any students of the poem who have not already had access to my former work, I do not think that it would be either expedient or useful to repeat in this place the information which is collected there, but a short history of the major portion of Edward FitzGerald's material is necessary, for the purpose of showing why this question of translation, adaptation, or original composition should have been a question open to lengthy argument, and why it has been impossible to set it at rest until the present time, when forty years have elapsed since first Edward FitzGerald's poem attracted the attention of those great scholars and poets who rescued it, as recounted in the threadbare anecdote, from the oblivion of the penny box.