TLERUBAIYATOf OMAR KHAYYAM a FITZGERALD V GIFT OF Mrs. T. "'. Aiken 1 f3J9^A bV' r / RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM OMAR KHAYYAM. **Thc great charm of all ancient literatures, one often thinks^ is the finding of ourselves in the past. It is as if the fable of repeated and recurring lives were true ; as if in the faith, or unbelief, or mer- riment, or despair, or courage, or cowardice of men long dead, we heard the echoes of our own thoughts, and the beating of hearts that were once our own. This may explain, in part, the popularity to-day of Omar Khayyam, the Poet- Astronomer of Persia. When Duke William was conquering England, when Harold fell, when Herew^ard the Wake was waging his hopeless fight in the fens of Ely, Omar was writing on algebra, and writing poetry too, at Merv, in Central Asia. Who could have foreseen that Merv would one day become a place of moment to England, or that hich the Sultan granted at the Vizier 's request. Selfish and ungrateful he endea'vored to sup- plant his benefactor and^was disgraced and banished. Omar asked for neither title or office, and simply begged to be allowed to lHye in a corner under the shado%> of the Vizier's fortune, 'where he might spread the advantages of Science and pray for his friend's ^ong life and prosperity. The Vizier impressed by his sincerity granted him a yearly pension, and the old Tent-Maker gave his fj life to Science and Song. m SM^»^mm^^s^%^^ ^m: THE RU5A1YAT OF OMAR KriAYYAM (J THE ASTRONOMER POET OF PER5I4I ... RENDERED INTO ENaiSH VERSE BY ^^^ EDWARD FITZGERALD THE TEXT or THE fOURTH EDITION FOL- lOWED BY THAT Of THE PIRST.WITH f10T£5 SHOWING THE EXTENT OP HIS INOEBTED-I NESS TO THE PERSIAN ORIGINAL. A BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE fITZCERALDB SKETCH Of THE llfE or OMAR, AND A FOREWORD BY TALCOTr WILLIAMS PHILADELPHIA ry J FROM THE PUBLISHING HOUSE OF '^^ THE JOHN C.WINSTON COMPANY Copyfight, 1898, by HENRY T. COATES & CO. CONTENTS* Omai^— Fofc-Wofd and Forc-PIca. By Talcott Vifliams. . x! To E. Fitzgcfald, By Alfred, Lord Tennyson xxv Biographical Preface. By Michael Kearney zzvii A Rose -Tree From Omar's Tomb. By Edmund Gosse . . xliii Omar Khayyam's Grave. By William Simpson xlv Omar Khayyam* By Graham R. Tomson liil Omar Khayyam, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia* By Edward Fitzgerald hr Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Fourth Edition ) Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. First Edition 27 Notes 49 Notes by the Editor 59 "^ **StiItan and Slave alike have gone their way With Bahram Gttr, but whither none may say. Yet he who charmed the wise at Naishapur Seven centuries since, still charms the wise to-day/' — Thomas Bailey Atdrich. OMAR— FORE-WORD AND FORE-PLEA. By TALCOTT WILLIAMS. HE Persian alone of Aryan stock has lifted his Iranic forefin§fer and testified to one God and his Prophet. Fragments of Aryan nations have become Mohammedan^ all alongf the Islamic fringfe. Nowhere else a nation. "Why the Semitic mind reached monotheism centuries earlier than the Aryan, which is still imperfectly mono- theistic in reIi§fious theory and practice, in dogfma and in worship, it is in our present state of knowledge impos- sible to explain. "We cannot even say certainly whether Aryan and Semitic are convergent or divergent stems of the human root-stock — singular or plural in structure, who shall decide ? We know, for this has gone on in the visible and recorded day of history, that the Aryan races tend in their day of trial and troubles to invent a new God, and the Semitic to return to an old one. Polytheism is the note early and late of Europe, until it learned monotheism from a Semitic prophet whom a squad of Aryan soldiers — probably Teuton, which is to say of the Aryan future and advance — crucified. By nature, the Semite is a monotheist. His religious impulses UKiViiiitSiX:^ Oi? CAUFOKJSIa^ :^/:.„/,.j.r xH FORE-WORD hctc begfin and here cndp often with much wandermgf between, but also with much certainty. Of the two world religions he has gfiven humanity, his latter pro- duct, Mohammedanism, was rejected by every Aryan nation other than the Persian, though on a short-lived October day at Tours in mid-France it once seemed as if all the European Arya would adopt Islam* It did not, and the history of literature furnishes but one school of national letters in which the particolored Aryan imagination and inspiration has had to adjust its rosy dream to the iron bed of Semitic monism* Omar is the most significant product of this conflict and collision between the bent of a race and the bending of a creed* Islam is the last word of the Semitic tendency. For the pure Semitic races, it is a final faith. There is a sense in which it is more Hebraic than the Hebrew conception of religion, and its solitary lapses are due to the rabbinical properties which Mohammed found flotsam on the beach where the Jewish race had ship- wrecked, and made of them the grotesque salvage of his tent. Remove these and you have the best of Israel^ minus the Messiah, robed in an Arab austerity. Fate and the Arab lances at the Battle of the Bridges drove this creed down the laughter-loving throat of the Per- sian. He lives in the Orient. He is not, any more than is the Japanese, in the proper sense of the word, an Oriental. Any one of us with Asiatic acquaintance, early learns that he can reach a contact with Persians^ can enjoy intimate relations and a personal sympathy FORE. WORD xiix as he cannot with other Mohammedans or theit mote distant neighbors* The European diplomatic repre- sentatives at Teheran come away with friendships such as they gain nowhere else from Fez to Pekin* Race h& more than faith. The Aryan Mohammedan h.^ still Aryan rather than Mohammedan^ close as is the grip of that vice-like creed which h^ alone among faiths in presenting no race which having adopted has aban- doned* Shut in by Moslem lands^ the open and arid gate through which the Central Asiatic horde has poured for loot on the twin river valleys, the Euphrates and the Nile, and the Levant beyond, as rich — the Persian \^ perforce Mohammedan, but he has worn his rue — bitter he has found it — with a difference, and invented his own special heresy* He has ^t.\\sz6, his incarnation in Ali* He has linked the Prophet in an eternal and original relation with the divine. "Wine 'i^ his, and so it is pictured art, and he has devised an ingenious contract-marriage — which combines in convenient proportion the hetairic license of the West and the rigid legal formalism in mat- ters of sex of the East, where the field may indeed be wider, but the fence higher and more impassable than in Western society* The Mohammedan, we always re- member, has gained much in legal license* We always forget how much he has foresworn in individual initia- tive* He has his preserve* He does not poach* The few men I have known who have tried both plans, prefer the Mohammedan* A restricted polygamy was to them more seemly than monogamy modified by aav FORE- WORD prostitution* The Persian, being both Aryan and Mohammedan, has combined both plans, and enjoys the unenviable deep of igfnominy that both the East and the West unite in his sexual detestation. The youn§f Persian of aspiration and ability who finds himself environed by these antinomies of race and religion, driven one way by his creed and another by his character, takes refuge in becoming Sufi. Watered by his desires rather than his convictions, the dry branch of Semitic monotheism puts forth the white flower of mysticism, and sets in that strange fruitage which is perpetually reminding us that under all skies and for both sexes religious fervor and sexual passion may be legal tender for the same emotions, the twin halves of the same coin which bears, as some ancient pieces do, on one side the altars of the God and on the other the symbol of lust. By creed, the young Persian must believe in one God. As Sufi he sees in one God a monism which makes all the universe the manifestation of the divine unity. Into the chilly cup of the formal observ- ance of the Koran he pours the wine of life, and drinks to all creeds alike, treating all conduct as the consecra- tion and completion of self in the diviner enthusiasm of nature. He may withdraw himself from the outer world and ponder alone on the ineffable unity of God to which after long travail and travel, if he faint not in this desert of self with its mirages of sense, a man may in due season lose himself by finding God, or, since God is in all his works, and nowhere more than in the in- FORE-WORD XV scrutabic inspiration of sex and the amazingf intoxica- tion of the vine, he may equally lose himself in these adorable works of the divine, si§fn, symbol and expres- sion of those deeper processes of the spirit by which the imagfe of God \s implanted in the receptive and womblike soul and man is lost in a deep and divine intoxication where the senses reel and only the inner nature lives, conscious or unconscious* If human nature were 6xviAz,^ and differenced into the exclusive logfical categories of a code of ethics, and had no ill habit of self-deception or dangerous possibility of auto- temptation, our young Persian would be one kind of Sufi or the other* He would run with the hare of aspiration or hunt with the hounds of sensual desire. Instead, he generally does both. Often, beginning with restraint in youth, and as years come and the experience of life tells age what youth missed, he redresses the absent follies of youth by the more abundant folly of age. The flitting forties as they fade into the fifties are fruitful in all lands of such fate. Oscillating easily, early or later or both, between spirit and sense, the Persian swings like a pendulum from sensual desire to spiritual ecstasy, and the dial face of his literature records both beats impartially. Of most, perhaps all, Persian Sufi verse it is impossible to say authoritatively in which mood it was conceived or whether a carnal or spiritual conjugation %\iv^6, the paradigm of amo* Many dull men and some men of genious have written verse under this dual inspiration. Little of it XVI FORE- WORD interests^ save in its original Persian* These lower jungles of native and overgrown verse, when a path has been cleared through them by translation, seem dull in all tongues but their own* The peaks alone are always -visMc in all latitudes, catch the same sunlight and bear the same flora* They are few* It would be idle criticism to urge the astronomer-poet of Persia as one of them. His Western vogue — not all the work of his translator — he owes to causes broader and more general than the accident of a happy version like Fitzgerald^s. He wrote at a moment fortunate for his style, his language and his wide acceptance* The great experi- ment of the Caliphate had failed. It had given the Moslem world neither authority in Religion nor security in the State* A century before Omar's birth, Mustakfi had lost the last remnant of civil power ajoyed by his predecessors. The Pope rose from priest to sovereign. The Caliph sank from sovereign to priest* The short- lived peace of the Abbassids which had stretched from the Atlantic to the Indus ended in whelming rack, as complete and as terrible to human happiness as the more tragic and more visible fate of the Roman rule* The first ferment and fission which split the crum- bling arch of empire and broke it into wrangling and waning kingdoms had been succeeded at Omar's birth and boyhood by that secondary irruption of the savage which in all dying states means massacre and irretriev- able ruin* The Berber of the South Atlas under Yusuf Ben Tashfin was riding and ravaging from the Wad Sus FOPE-WOPD xvii to Guadalquhrif . Under Arab rulers, the Touaregf horse of the Fatimids was spoiling: the longf coast of the Mediterranean from the site of Carthagfe to the site of Tyre, and endingf for centuries a commerce which had begun with the dawn of history^ Over his own land, successive tides of invasion had swept as the Northern steppe hived its hideous swarms and left desolute through all the years that have passed the city-sprinkled plains from the Oxus to the iEgfean* East of him, the Pathan mountaineers had begun under Mahmud of Ghazni that descent on either fertile plain which has ended so often in the sack of Delhi or the ravage of Khurasan* Out of all the welter the strong hand of the Seljuk was forming the outlines of the vigorous rule which later on transformed itself into the wasting dominion of the Turk* Through all the lands that Omar knew, no city was safe, no man dwelt secure and no delicate woman slept unaware of the hideous slavery into which she might be swept on the morrow, tending some Tartar campfire as a little later women of half the princely stocks of Asia dtud^cd in the hordes of Chingiz or slaved in the tents of Timun The wail of Augustine and the plaint of Boethius we know under like conditions, and after half a millennium of long rapine and ravage as we pass the cloisters of Cluny, when all the Roman world was long since waste and its brief successor in the West had left only failure, there sounds the wide lament, '^Hora novissima, tem- pora pessima sunt, vigilemus^ as men painfully adapt xviii FORE- WORD themselves to new ideals of the State and seek celestial consolation* A century earlier^ the Moslem world of Khurasan was facingf like failure in the Eastern successor of stable Rome, and^ sunk in the infinite and irremediable misery of the hot ashes of successive savagfe eruptions, was adjustingf its theories of the past, its sufferingfs in the present and its hopes of the future to the shattered fragments of brutal rule which brougfht despotic and pre- carious protection* Some men, like the school-fellow of Omar, Hasan, fled in a despair akin to insanity to desolate mountain valleys, once peopled, and tempered despotism with a remedy so stran§fe and new to the world that men in all tongues East and West could but give it the name of its inventor. Like another school-mate to whom the poet owed his honorable sup- port, others sought service with whatever strong-armed ruler had the wit and will to commute plunder into taxation, a process sometimes reversed in our own day and land* Men such as Omar, could but seek, as Plato once advised, some convenient door-way during the pitiless rain and watch like a spectator the misery of passing humanity in the world's open street swept by the storm of war* His language was ready to his hand* Firdausi had given it epic dignity, conscious expression and metric form. Persian stood in Omar's day, if one may com- pare great things with less, where Simonides found his tongue when he turned to epigram and raised the Greek FORE-WORD XIX analogfue of the Persian quatrain to its higfhest and most austere level of unapproachable perfection* If Persia had had its first gfreat epic poet, the descent and decline of its poetry had not yet begfun. It was not as yet smothered under its own riches, its muse overwhelmed by a Tarpeian gift of metaphor, betrayin§f the virgin citadel of style to win the treacherous prize of popular praise* The tent-maker's son found it an instrument still simple, strong and dignified, and he brought to the repressed expression of his day a nature more akin to the "West than to the East* Of the events of his life, we know little* Of the character and cast of his mind, we know much. Fortune gave him the happy fate that while the day of his birth is forgotten, the birth of his works is remembered. He combined the imagina- tion of the mathematician and the patience of the computer* The specious axioms of Euclid could not deceive him and he anticipated the challenge of six succeeding centuries by perceiving the limitations and assumptions in the definitions of the great Alexandrian* The dominical labor of astronomical tables did not daunt him* His adjustment of the calendar was more accurate than that of Clavius after four hundred years of added knowledge* The Tarikh a Jallili opens the way to less error than the correction of Gregory in the calendar of Caesar, an accuracy which the Persian observer shares with the Maya star-gazers of Yucatan* This singular endowment of original imagination, of freedom from the trammels of authority and stem XX FORE-WORD resolution to submit to the slavery of slow toil, suffuses his quatrains. He spoke because he had thoug^ht, had achieved and had endured. This gave substance to his verse, dignity to his style and character to his utterance. The precise form in which he expressed his protest at a creed alien to his race and native to his birth, baffles translation, as all such expression must. The simplicity of his verse reflects the simplicity of his life. Thought h simple. Its expression becomes complex as life grows complicated. In this, letters and man move together. With what an apparatus do we envelope our days, and what a lengthening coil of conveniences do we drag through the gathering years! There probably never was a time when all Omar^s bed, he.66in^ and ward- robe, the books of his studies and the tools of his trade, cross-staff and perchance some early predecessors of the astrolabe, were not easily packed away in a single one of the small closets in the thick walls of a Persian home. A single mule load, and himself above, was all he needed and asked for travel. A porter with his knot could always have moved all the possessions of the observer and poet. His pleasuring was in the open court, where water rippled into the square pool as he sat on one side, with no furniture for his dinner but a rug to sit upon and a dish to eat from, and on the other brink, before him, the lute-player twanged, and the cypress-waisted girl, her breasts rounded beneath the thin silk of Mosul, bent and turned and swayed, her FORE- WORD XXI bare feet pressing: the patterned and particolored prayer- rtt§f on which^ as the muzzein sounded^ Omar was bent in prayer in the words of the Rikat and the spirit of universal worship. Afield, we yearn for all that a house can hold, and the commissariat of a picnic taxes and tests the manifold orgfanization of a modern market and draws for its prepared foods on the last triumph of science and the last adaptation of glass and metal to the preservation of the fruits of every clime* But Omar — wiser or less wise, who shall say ? — walked abroad to the gardens about Naishapur, whose stream- ing irrigation differenced them from the parched and barren wastes beyond, and so there was an open arch out of whose cool and inner recess a fountain welled, with maidenVhair thick about and shade over the cut- stone runlet in which grapes lay cooling and the wine- jar was set, and in the pouched waist of his zeboon a brown loaf or two — ** 't were Paradise enoV — when some girl stood in the moving shade of the spreading walnut-tree, her arms swaying and the undulations of passion passing over all her form as the sea swells in calm nights when storms have been and are to be. If life be as simple as its passions, and the astron- omer himself have naught between his eye and the stars but the clear air, and between man and maid there be naught but desire, the expression of the poet will center to the antinomy of his race and age, and the boundaries of being will limit his vision. None else will he see, and for none else do men at the last yearn* TCTCII FORE- WORD Christianity^ like an indefinite decimal^ whose ultimate end and analysis lie in the infinite, is always approx- imatingf to monotheism without ever quite reaching^ it* When men do, they are near Omar, for this sensitive Aryan poet — sensitive, Aryan, and a poet — which is to express, had passed through the furnace of a mon- istic faith and had come out annealed and an agnostic* The rapid succession of Islam, like some short-lived plant which blooms and blasts in thin soil, had run its cycle more swiftly than its opposing faith* In a cen- tury its creed was fixed* In two it had its revival of Greek learning* In three or four, its science had sphered its full round of discovery* Its day was done* There remained hut the sterile sword of Seljuk and Turk* As it was first unsheathed, Omar came* The micro- cosm of Islam held in small all that was to unfold at large in the macrocosm of Christianity* He knew how little a creed could do when knowledge had outrun faith* He saw how strong grow the claims of sense when science is the sole stay of conduct, for the visible facts of life are of the flesh* The nice subtlety of theolog- ical explanation he had weighed and found wanting* He had learned how barren are mere morals* He had felt how full is the universe to the soul, and how empty to the thinker or the theologian* These all were as plain at Naishapur in the eleventh century as in the new world in the nineteenth* The tide of every faith, as it ebbs, leaves exposed the same barren sands of doubt, and on them, whether Marcus write in Rome^ FORE- WORD XXiU Of Omar in Naishapiif , the same sentence appears, and we read the same meanmgf. Not every breeze has its harp, and not every beach its poet. Many faiths ebb, and have neither Marcus nor Omar. But what Omar wrote, many wrote. So universal is his message that of his quatrains scores are dubious, and no man can separate true from false, or establish a canon of author- ship. He wrote what all men feel. All men feel what he wrote. The Oriental, wise above what is written, cares much for the messa8:e and little for the messen- ger. Since it be worth reading, of what moment is it who wrote? For us, there must needs be the more complex meaning and music of his translator ; but the original center of attraction, the final cause of sym- pathy, which has suddenly made Omar's name a house- hold word in every Western home of the Muses, lies deeper than verse or meaning, utterance or desire. Brothers by race and alien by creed, here too is another, who has known, as we have known, the shock and contrast between the Semitic sense for morals and the Aryan sense for beauty, and so feeling is of one kin- dred, though seas divide and tongues separate* ^ TO E. FITZGERALD* Old Fitz, who from your suburb gfrangfc^ "Where once I tarried for a while, Glance at the wheeling; orb of change. And greet it with a kindly smile; Whom yet I see as there you sit Beneath your sheltering garden-tree. And while your doves about you flit. And plant on shoulder, hand and knee. Or on your head their rosy feet. As if they knew your diet spares Whatever moved in that full sheet Let down to Peter at his prayers ; Who live on milk and meal and grass: And once for ten long weeks I tried Your table of Pythagoras, And seem'd at first ** a thing enskied ^ (As Shakespeare has it) airy-light To float above the ways of men. Then fell from half-spiritual height Chill'd, till I tasted flesh again One night when earth was winter-black. And all the heavens f lashM in frost ; And on me, half-asleep, came back That wholesome heat the blood had lost, And set me climbing icy capes And glaciers, over which there rolled To meet me long-arm'd vines with grapes Of Eshcol hugfcncss ; for the cold "Withotit, and warmth within me, wrought To mould the dream ; but none can say That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought, Who reads your golden Eastern lay. Than which I know no version done In English more divinely well ; A planet equal to the sun Which cast it, that large infidel Your Omar ; and your Omar drew Full-handed plaudits from our best In modem letters, and from two, Old friends outvaluing all the rest. Two voices heard on earth no more ; But we old friends are still alive. And I am nearing seventy-four. While you have touched at seventy-five. And so I send a birthday line Of greeting ; and my son who dipt In some forgotten book of mine With sallow scraps of manuscript. And dating many a year ago. Has hit on this, which you will take. My FstZf and welcome, as I know. Less for its own than for the sake Of one recalling gracious times. When, in our younger London days, You found some merit in my rhymes. And I more pleasure in your praise* Alfred, Lord Tennysoru xxvi BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. DWARD FITZGERALD, whom the world has eAtc&dy learned, in spite of his own efforts to remain within the shadow of anonymity, to look upon as one of the rarest poets of the century, was bom at Bredfield, in Suffolk, on the 3tst March, J809. He was the third son of John Purcell, of Kilkenny, in Ireland, who, marryingf Miss Mary Frances Fitzgferald, daughter of John Fitzgerald, of Williamstown, County Waterford, added that distinguished name to his own patronymic ; and the future Omar was thus doubly of Irish extrac- tion* (Both the families of Purcell and Fitzgerald claim descent from Norman warriors of the eleventh century.) This circumstance is thought to have had some influence in attracting him to the study of Persian poetry, Iran and Erin being almost convertible terms in the early days of modern ethnology. After some years of primary education at the grammar school of Bury St* Edmunds, he entered Trinity College, Cam- bridge, in J 826, and there formed acquaintance with several young men of great abilities, most of whom rose to distinction before him, but never ceased to xxvU xxviii BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE tegfard with affectionate remembrance the quiet and amiable associate of their collegfe-days^ Amongst them were Alfred Tennyson, James Speddingf, "William Bod- ham Donnet John Mitchell Kemble, and William Makepeace Thackeray; and their long; friendship has been touchingly referred to by the Laureate in dcdi- catingf his last poem to the memory of Edward Fitz- gferald* ^'Euphranor,^ our author's earliest printed work, affords a curious picture of his academic life and associations* Its substantial reality h evident beneath the thin disgfuise of the symbolical or classical names which he gives to the personages of the col- loquy; and the speeches which he puts into his own mouth are full of the humorous gravity, the whimsical and kindly philosophy, which remained his distin- guishing characteristics till the end* This book was first published in t85l; a second and a third edition were printed some years later; all anonymous, and each of the latter two differing from its predecessor by changes in the text which were not indicated on the title-pages* '^Euphranor^ furnishes a good many character- izations which would be useful for any writer treating upon Cambridge society in the third decade of this century* Kenelm Digby, the author of the ^Broad- stone of Honour,^ had left Cambridge before the time when Euphranor held his ^'dialogue,'' but he i& pic- turesquely recollected as ''a grand swarthy fellow who might have stepped out of the canvas of some knightly BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE XXIX portrait in his father's hall — perhaps the livingf imagfe of one sleeping under some cross-legged effigies in the church.^ In ^'Euphranor^ it is easy to discover the earliest phase of the unconquerable attachment which Fitzgerald entertained for his college, and his life-long friends, and which induced him in later days to make frequent visits to Cambridge, renewing and refreshing the old ties of custom and friendship* In fact, his disposition was affectionate to a fault, and he betrayed his consciousness of weakness in that respect by refer- ring playfully at times to '^a certain natural lubricity^ which he attributed to the Irish character, and professed to discover especially in himself* This amiability of temper endeared him to many friends of totally dis- similar tastes and qualities; and, by enlarging his sympathies, enabled him to enjoy the fructifying influence of studies pursued in communion with schol- ars more profound than himself, but less gifted with the power of expression. One of the younger Cambridge men with whom he became intimate during his periodical pilgrimages to the university was Edward B* Cowell, a man of the highest attainment in Oriental learning, who resembled Fitzgerald himself in the possession of a warm and genial heart, and the most unobtrusive modesty. From Cowell he could easily learn that the hypothetical affinity between the names of Erin and Iran belong to an obsolete stage of etymology ; but the attraction of a far-fetched theory was replaced by the charm of reading Persian poetry BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE in companionship with his youngf friend, who was equally competent to enjoy and to analyze the beauties of a literature that formed a portion of his regfular studies* They read together the poetical remains of Khayyam — a choice of readingf which sufficiently indi- cates the depth and rangfe of Mr» Cowell^s knowledgfe* Omar Khayyam, althougfh not quite f orgfotten, enjoyed in the history of Persian literature a celebrity like that of Occleve and Gower in our own* In the many Tazkirai (memoirs or memorials) of poets he was mentioned and quoted with esteem; but Iiis poems, laboring; as they did under the orig:inal sin of heresy and atheism, were seldom looked at, and from lack of demand on the part of readers had become rarer than those of most other writers since the days of Firdausi* European scholars knew little of his works beyond his Arabic treatise on Algfebra, and Mr* Cowell may be said to have disentombed fiis poems from oblivion* Now, thanks to the fine taste of that scholar, and to the transmuting: gfenius of Fitzgerald, no Persian poet is so well known in the western world as Abu-'I-fat^ ^Omar, son of Ibranim the Tent-maker of Naishapur, whose manhood synchronizes with the Norman con- quest of England, and who took for his poetic name (iakhallus) the designation of his father's trade {Khay- yam)* The Rubaiyyai (Quatrains) do not comprise a single poem divided into a certain number of stanzas ; there \s no continuity of plan in them, and each stanza is a distinct thought expressed in musical verse* There BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE XXXI is no other dement of unity in them than the gfeneral tendency of the Epicurean idea^ and the arbitrary divan form by which they are grouped according^ to the alphabetical arrangfement of the final letters ; those in which the rhymes end in a constituting^ the first division^ those with h the second, and so on* The peculiar attitude towards religfion and the old questions of fate, immortality, the origin and the destiny of man, which educated thinkers have assumed in the present ag;e of Christendom, is found admirably foreshadowed in the fantastic verses of Khayyam, who was no more of a Mohammedan than many of our best writers are Christians. His philosophical and Horatian fancies — gfraced as they are by the charms of a lyrical expression equal to that of Horace, and a vivid brilliance of imagfinatxon to which the Roman poet could make no claim — exercised a powerful influence upon Fitz- gerald^s mind, and colored his thougfhts to such a degree that even when he oversteps the larg:cst license allowed to a translator, his phrases reproduce the spirit and manner of his origfinal with a nearer approach to perfection than would appear possible. It is usually supposed that there is more of Fitzgerald than of Khayyam in the English Rabatyyaif and that the old Persian simply afforded themes for the Anglo-Irish- man's display of poetic power; but nothing could be further from the truth. The French translator, J. B. Nicolas, and the English one, Mr. Whinfield, supply a closer mechanical reflection of the sense in each XKxii BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE separate stanza^ but Mn Fitzgerald has^ in some instances^ given a version equally close and exact ; in others, rejointed scattered phrases from more than one stanza of his original, and thus accomplished a feat of marvelous poetical transfusion^ He frequently turns literally into English the strange outlandish imagery which Mn Whinfield thought necessary to replace by more intelligible banalities, and in this way the magic of his genius has successfully transplanted into the garden of English poesy exotics that bloom like native f lowers* One of Mr* Fitzgerald^s Woodbridge friends was Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, with whom he maintained for many years the most intimate and cordial intercourse, and whose daughter Lucy he mar- ried* He wrote the memoir of his friend's life which appeared in the posthumous volume of Barton's poems* The story of his married life was a short one* With all the overflowing amiability of his nature, there were mingled certain peculiarities or waywardnesses which were more suitable to the freedom of celibacy than to the staidness of matrimonial life* A separation took place by mutual agreement, and Fitzgerald be- haved in this circumstance with the generosity and unselfishness which were apparent in all his whims no less than in his more deliberate actions* Indeed, his entire career was marked by an unchanging goodness of heart and a genial kindliness; and no one could complain of having ever endured hurt or ill-treatment BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE joam at his hands. His pleasures were innocent and simple* Amongst the more deligfhtful, he counted the short coasting: trips, occupying: no more than a day or two at a time, which he used to make in his own yacht from Lowestoft, accompanied only by a crew of two men, and such a friend as Gjwell, with a largfe pasty and a few bottles of wine to supply their material wants* It is needless to say that books were also put into the cabin, and that the symposia of the friends were thus brig:htened by communion with the minds of the gfreat departed. Fit2g:erald's enjoyment of gfnomic wisdom enshrined in words of exquisite pro- priety was evinced by the frequency with which he used to read Montaigfne^s essays and Madame 6c Sevig:ne^s letters, and the various works from which he extracted and published his collection of wise saws entitled ** Polonius.^ This taste was allied to a love for what was classical and correct in literature, by which he was also enabled to appreciate the prim and formal muse of Crabbe, in whose gfrandson^s house he 6it6* His second printed work was the ^Polonius,'* already referred to, which appeared in 1852* It exem- plifies his favorite reading:, being: a collection of extracts, sometimes short proverbial phrases, sometimes Iong:er pieces of characterization or reflection, arrang:ed tinder abstract heading:s. He occasionally quotes Dr. Johnson, for whom he entertained sincere admiration ; but the pondorous and artificial fabric of Johnsonese xxxiv BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE did not please him like the languagfe of Bacon, Faflef, Sir Thomas Browne, Coleridgfe, whom he cites fre- quently. A disproportionate abundance of wise words was drawn from Carlyle; his origfinal views, his for- cible sense, and the friendship with which Fitzgerald regarded him, having apparently blinded the latter to the ungainly style and ungraceful mannerisms of the Chelsea sagc^ (It was Thackeray who first made them personally acquainted forty years ago; and Fitzgerald remained always loyal to his first instincts of affection and admiration.*) Polonius also marks the period of his earliest attention to Persian studies, as he quotes it in the great Sufi poet Jalal-ud-din-Rumi, whose Masna^vi has lately been translated into English by Mr. Redhouse, but whom Fitzgerald can only have seen in the originaL He, however, spells the name Jathtadiiif an incorrect form of which he could not have been guilty at the time when he produced Omar Khayyam, and which thus betrays that he had not *TIic close relation that subsisted between Fitzgerald and Carlylc has lately been made patent by an article in the Hisforicat Revie'W upon the Squire papers— those celebrated documents pur- porting to be contemporary records of Cromwell's time — which were accepted by Carlyle as genuine, but which other scholars have asserted from internal evidence to be modem forgeries. However the question may be decided, the fact which concerns us here is that our poet was the negotiator between Mr. Squire and Carlyle, and that his correspondence with the latter upon the sub- ject reveals the intimate nature of their acquaintance. BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE ZZZY long: been cngfagfcd with Irani literature* He was very fond of Montaigfne^s essays, and of Pascal's Pensees ; Imt his Polonius reveals a sort of dhVikc. and contempt for Voltaire* Amongst the Germans, Jean Paul, Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt, and Augfust Wil- helm von Schlcgfel attracted him greatly ; but he seems to have read little German, and probably only quoted translations* His favorite motto was ''Plain Living and High Thinking,'^ and he expresses great reverence for all things manly, simple, and true* The laws and institutions of England were, in his eyes, of the highest value and sacredncss ; and whatever Irish sympathies he had would never have diverted his affections from the Union to Home Rule* This is strongly illustrated by some original lines of blank verse at the end of Polonius, annexed to his quotation, under ''iEsthetics,** of the words in which Lord Palmerston eulogized Mr* Gladstone for having devoted his Neapolitan tour to an inspection of the prisons* Fitzgerald's next printed work was a translation of Six Dramas of Calderon, published in {853, which was unfavorably received at the time, and conse- quently withdrawn by him from circulation* His name appeared on the title-page— a concession to publicity which was so unusual with him that it must have been made under strong pressure from his friends* The book is in nervous blank verse, a mode of com- position which he handled with great ease and skill* There is no waste of power in diffuseness and no XXXVl BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE employment of unnecessary epithets* It gives the impression of a work of the Shakespearean agfe, and reveals a kindred felicity, strengfth, and directness of langftiagfe* It deserves to rank with his best efforts in poetry, but its ill-success made him feel that the publi- cation of his name was an unfavorable experiment, and he never again repeated it* His great modesty, however, would sufficiently account for this shyness* Of ** Omar Khayyam,^ even after the little book had won its way to general esteem, he used to say that the suggested addition of his name on the title would imply an assumption of importance which he con- sidered that his ** transmogrification ^ of the Persian poet did not possess* Fitzgerald^s conception of a translator's privilege is well set forth in the prefaces of his versions from Cal- deron, and the Agamemnon of iEschylus* He main- tained that, in the absence of the perfect poet, who shall re-create in his own language the body and soul of his original, the best system iz that of a paraphrase conserving the spirit of the author — a sort of literary metempsychosis* Calderon, ^Eschylus, and Omar Khayyam were all treated with equal license so far as form i& concerned — the last, perhaps, the most arbi- trarily ; but the result is not unsatisfactory, as having given us perfect English poems instinct with the true flavor of their prototypes* The Persian was probably somewhat more Horatian and less melancholy, the Greek a little less florid and mystic, the Spaniard more BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE XZZVIl lyrical and fluent^ than their metaphrast has made them J but the essential spirit has not escaped in trans- fusion* Only a man of singular gifts could have per- formed the achievement^ and these works attest Mr* Fitzgerald's right to rank amongst the finest poets of the century* About the same time as he printed his Calderon^ another set of translations from the same dramatist was published by the late D* F* MacCarthy^ a scholar whose acquaintance with Castilian literature was much deeper than Mr* Fitzgerald^ and who also possessed poetical abilities of no mean order^ with a totally different sense of the translator's duty* The popularity of MacCarthy's versions has been consider- able, and as an equivalent rendering of the original in sense and form his work is valuable* Spaniards familiar with the English language rate its merit highly; but there can be little question of the very great superiority of Mr* Fitzgerald's work as a con- tribution to English literature* It is indeed only from this point of view that we should regard all the literary labors of our author* They are English poetical work of fine quality, dashed with a pleasant out- landish flavor, which heightens their charm ; and it is as English poems, not as translations, that they have endeared themselves even more to the American- English than to the mixed Britons of England* It was an occasion of no small moment to Mf« Fitzgerald's fame, and to the intellectual gratification of many thousands of readers, when he took his little xxxviii BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE packet of RubsLtyyai to Mn Quaritch in the latter part of the year (858* It was printed as a small quarto pamphlet, bearing: the publisher's name, but not the author's ; and althougfh apparently a complete failure at first — 2l failure which Mr» Fitzg^erald regfretted less on his own account than on that of his publisher, to whom he had g^enerously made a present of the book — received, nevertheless, a sufficient distribution by beingf quickly reduced from the price of five shillings and placed in the box of cheap books marked a penny each* Thus forced into circulation, the two hundred copies which had been printed were soon exhausted* Among: the buyers were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mr* Swinburne, Captain (now Sir Richard) Burton, and Mr* William Simpson, the accomplished artist of the Ittusirated London Ne^s* The influence exercised by the first three, especially by Rossetti, upon a clique of young: men who have since g:rown to distinction, was sufficient to attract observation to the sing:ular beauties of the poem anonymously translated from the Persian* Most readers had no possible opportunity of discovering: whether it was a disguised orig:inal or an actual trans- lation — even Captain Burton enjoyed probably but little chance of seeing: a manuscript of the Persian Rubaiyyat. The Oriental imag:ery and allusions were too thickly scattered throug:hout the verses to favor the notion that they could be the orig:inal work of an Eng:lishman; yet it was shrewdly suspected by most of the appreciative readers that the ^translator'' was BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE substantially the author and creator of the poena. In the refugfe of his anonymity Fitzgerald dcrfvcd an innocent stratification from the curiosity that was aroused on all sides. After the first edition had disap- peared, inquiries for the little book became frequent, and in the year 1868 he gfave the MS, of his second edition to Mr, Quaritch, and the Rubaiyyat came into circulation once more, but with several alterations and additions, by which the number of stanzas was some- what increased beyond the origfinal seventy-five. Most of the changfes were, as might have been expected, improvements ; but in some instances the author's taste or caprice was at fault — notably in the first Rubaiy, His fastidious desire to avoid anything that seemed baroque or unnatural, or appeared like plagiarism, may have influenced him ; but it was probably because he had already used the idea in his rend^sring of Jami's Salaman, that he sacrificed a fine and novel piece of imagery in his first stanza and replaced it by one of much more ordinary character. If it were from a 6hWiLZ to pervert his original too largely, he had no need to be so scrupulous, since he dealt on the whole with the Rubaiyyat as though he had the license of absolute authorship, changing, transposing, and manip- ulating the substance of the Persian quatrains with singular freedom. The vogue of ** Old Omar ^ (as he would affectionately call his work) went on increasing, and American readers took it up with eagerness. In those days, the mere mention of Omar Khayyam iJ BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE between two strangfers meetingf foftuitotssly acted like a sigfn of freemasonry, and established frequently a bond of friendship* Some curious instances of this have been related* A remarkable feature of the Omar-cult in the United States was the circumstance that singfle individuals bougfht numbers of copies for gratuitous distribution before the book was reprinted in America* Its editions have been relatively numerous, when we consider how restricted was the circle of readers who could understand the peculiar beauties of the work* A third edition appeared in {872, with some further alterations, and may be regfarded as virtually the author^s final revision, for it hardly differs at all from the text of the fourth edition, which appeared in 1879. This last formed the first portion of a volume entitled ** Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam ; and the Salaman and Absal of Jkmi; tendered into Engflish verse*^ The Salaman (which had already been printed in separate form in J 856) is a poem chiefly in blank verse, inter- spersed with various metres (althoug^h it is all in one measure in the origfinal), embodying: a love-story of mystic sigfnif icance ; for Jami was, unlike Omar Khay- yam, a true Sufi, and indeed differed in other respects, his celebrity as a pious Mussulman doctor beingf equal to his fame as a poet* He lived in the fifteenth century, in a period of literary brilliance and decay; and the rich exuberance of his poetry, full of far-fetched conceits, involved expressions, overstrained imagfery, and false taste, offers a strong: contrast to the simpler and BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE ^11 more forcible languagfc of Khayyam. There xs Ihtic use of Arabic in the C2it\ict poet ; he preferred the ver- nacular speech to the mongfrel langfuagfe which was fashioned among: the heirs of the Saracen conquerors ; but Jami^s composition h largely embroidered with Arabic Mr. Fitzg^erald had from his early days been thrown into contact with the Crabbe family; the Reverend Georsfe Crabbe (the poet's gfrandson) was an intimate friend of his, and it was on a visit to Morton Rectory that Fitzgerald 6it6* As we know that friendship has power to warp the judgment, we shall not probably be wrong in supposing that his enthusiastic admiration for Crabbers poems was not the product of sound, impartial criticism. He attempted to reintroduce them to the world by publishing a little volume of ''Readings from Crabbe,'^ produced in the last year of his life, but with- out success. A different fate awaited his ''Agamemnon : a tragedy taken from iEschylus,^ which was first printed privately by him, and afterwards published with alterations in 1876. It is a very free rendering from the Greek, and full of a poetical beauty which is but partly assignable to iCschylus. "Without attaining to anything like the celebrity and admiration which have followed Omar Khayyam, the Agamemnon has achieved much more than a succes dUstime. Mr. Fitz- gerald's renderings from the Greek were not confined to this one essay ; he also translated the two Oedipus dramas of Sophocles, but left them unfinished in manu- xIH BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE script till Prof. Eliot Norton had a sigfht of them ahout seven or eight years agfo and urgfed him to complete his work* When this was done, he had them set in type; but only a very few proofs can have been struck off, as it seems that, at least in England, no more than one or two copies were sent out by the authon In a similar way he printed translations of two of Calderon^s plays not included in the published "Six Dramas** — namely, La ^da es Sueno and Et cMagico ^rodigioso (both ranking* among the Spaniard's finest work); but they also were withheld from the public and all but half a dozen friends* When his old boatman 6k.df about ten years ago, he abandoned his nautical exercises, and gave up his yacht for ever* During the last few years of his life he 6i-vi6z6. his time between Cambridge, Crabbers house, and his own home at Little Grange, near "Woodbridge, where he received occasional visits from friends and relatives. This edition of the "Omar Khayyam** t& a modest memorial of one of the most modest men who have enriched English literature with poetry of distinct and permanent value* His best epitaph is found in Tennyson*s " Tiresias and other poems,** published im- mediately after our author's quiet exit from life, in 1883, in the seventy-fifth year of his age* M*K. A ROSE-TREE FROM OMAR^S TOMB. ¥ 77ie c/lihenaeum of Octotcf 7 prints the following; ^ Inscription^^ written by Mr* Edmund Gosse for the rose-tree brougfht by Mr» W* Simpson from Omar Khayyam^s tomb and planted on that day on the grave of Edward Fitzgerald at Boulget Suffolk : — ** Reign here^ triumphant rose from Omar's grave. Borne by a fakir o'er the Persian wave j Reign with fresh pride^ since here a heart is sleeping That double glory to your Master gave. ** Hither let many a pilgrim step be bent To greet the rose re-risen in banishment $ Here richer crimsons may its cup be keeping Than brimmed it ere from Naishapur it went.** Almost ten years ago an Englishman took a hand- ful of hips from the rose-trees near Omar*s grave at Naishapur — roses planted, as one of his pupils records, in obedience to the poet's wishes* silfi OMAR KHAYYAKPS GRAVE* ¥ N teference to the allusion quoted from Nizami (on pagfe Ix) to Omar Khay- yam's prophecy about his own grave^ the following: letter from Nishapur will have a considerable interest* The writer is a man of wide reputation as one of the traveling: artists of the Ulas^ iraied London cNs^s : Nishapur, 27th October, J884. Dear Mr* Quaritch: From the association of your name with that of Omar Khayam I feel sure that what I enclose in this letter will be acceptable* The rose-leaves I gfathered to-day, gfrowingf beside the tomb of the poet at this place, and the seeds are from the same bushes on which the leaves gfrew.* I suppose you are aware that I left early last month with Sit Peter Lumsden to accompany the * These seeds were handed over to Mr. Baker, of Kew Gar- densy who planted them, and they have grown tip 8ucccs8!tilly» bat at yet they have not produced flowers* sir xlvl O^^R KHAYYAM'S GRAVE Af gfhan Boundary- Commission In my old capacity as special artist for the Ittusirated London c^(e^s* We traveled by way of the Black Sea^ Tiflis^ Baku^ and the Caspian, to Teheran ; from that place we have been marching: eastward for nearly a month now^ and we reached Nishapur this momingf* For some days past, as we marched alongf, I have been making: inquiries regfardingf Omar Khayam and Nishapur ; I wanted to know if the house he lived in still existed, or if any spot was yet associated with his name^ It would seem that the only recog:mzed memo- rial now remaining: of him is his tomb* Our Mehman- dar, or *^ Guest-conductor ^ — while the Af g:han Bound- ary Commission is on Persian territory it is the guest of the Shah, and the Mehmandar is his representative, who sees that all our wants are attended to — appears to be familiar with the poet's name, and says that his works are still read and admired* The Mehmandar said he knew the tomb, and promised to be our g:uide when we reached Nishapur* We have just made the pilg:rimag:e to the spot ; it is about two miles south of the present Nishapur ; so we had to ride, and Sir Peter, who takes an interest in the matter, was one of the party* We found the g:round nearly all the way cov- ered with mounds, and the soil mixed with frag:ments of pottery, sure indications of former habitations* As we neared the tomb, long: i*idg:es of earth could be seen, which were no doubt the remains of the walls of the old city of Nishapur* To the east of the tomb is a larg:e OMAR KHAYYAM'S GRAVE xlvii square mound of earthy which is supposed to be the site of the Ark, or citadel of the original city* As we rode alongft the blue dome, which the Mehmandar had pointed out on the way as the tomb, had a very imposing^ appearance, and its importance improved as we neared it; this will be better understood by stating: that city walls, houses, and almost all structures in that part of Persia are built of mud* The blue dome, as well as its ^zCf produced in my mind, as we went towards it, a great satisfaction; it was pleasing to think that the countrymen of Omar Khayam held him in such high estimation as to erect so fine a monument, as well as to preserve it — this last being rarely done in the East — ^to his memory* If the poet was so honored in his own country, it was little to be wondered at that his fame should have spread so rapidly in the lands of the West* This I thought, but there was a slight disappointment in store for me* At last we reached the tomb, and found its general arrangements were on a plan I was familiar with in India ; whoever has visited the Taj at Agra, or any of the large Mohammedan tombs of Hindostan, will easily understand the one at Nishapur* The monument stands in a space enclosed by a mud wall, and the ground in front is laid out as a garden, with walks* The tomb at Nishapur, with all its sur- roundings, is in a very rude condition ; it never was a work which could claim merit for its architecture, and although it is kept so far in repair, it has still a very- decayed and neglected appearance* Even the blue xlviii OMAJ^ KHA YYAm*S GRA VE domCf which impressed me m the distance^ I founds on getting near to it^ was in a ruinous state from largfe portions of the enameled plaster havingf fallen off* Instead of the marble and the red stone of the Taj at Nishapur — ^with the exception of some enameled tiles producing a pattern around the base of the dome^ and also in the spandrels of the door and windows — there we find only bricks and plaster* The surrounding^ wall of the enclosure was of crumbling: mud^ and could be easily jumped over at any place* There is a rude entrance by which we went in and walked to the front of the tomb ; all along I had been under the notion that the whole structure was the tomb of Omar Khayam ; and now came the disenchantment* The place turned out to be an Imamzadah^ or the tomb of the son of an Imam* The son of an Imam inherits his sanctity from his father, and his place of burial becomes a holy place where pilgrims go to pray* The blue dome is over the tomb of such a person, who may have been a brute of the worst kind — that would not have affected his sanc- tity — instead of the poet, whom we reverence for the qualities which belonged to himself* When we had ascended the platform, about three feet high, on which the tomb stood, the Mehmandar turned to the left, and in a recess formed by three arches and a very rude roof, which seemed to have been added to the corner of the Imamzadah, pointed to the tomb of Omar Khayam* The discovery of a ^Poefs Corner^ at Nishapur naturally recalled Westminster Abbey to my mind, and OMAJR KHA YYAM'S GRA VE xKx tzvbrcd my spirits from the depression produced by- finding: that the principal tomb was not that of the poet« The monument over the tomb h an oblongf mass of brick covered with plaster^ and without orna- ment — the plaster falling: off in places ; on this and on the plaster of the recess are innumerable scribblingfs in Persian character* Some were, no doubt, names, for the British John Smith has not an exclusive tendency in this respect; but many of them were continued through a number of lines, and I gfuessed they were poetry, and most probably quotations from the Rubai- yat» AIthou8:h the ** Poet^s Comer ^ was in rather a dilapidated state, still it must have been repaired at no very distant date ; and this shows that some attention has been paid to it, and that the people of Nishapur have not quite forg^otten Omar Khayam. The Imamzadah — this word, which means Son of an Imam, applies to the person buried as well as to the lomb — was Mohammed Marook, brother of the Imam Reza, whose tomb at Meshed h considered so sacred by 4he Shias ; the Imam Reza was the eigfhth Imam, and -iicd in 818; this gfives us an approximate date for his brother, and it hf if I mistake not, a couple of centuries before the time of Omar Khayam ; and the Imamzadah — ^here I mean the building: — would have been erected, most probably, about that number of years before the poet required his resting:-place* Behind the Imamzadah is a Kubberstan, or ** Reg:ion of Graves,^ and the raised platform in front of the tomb contains in its toug:h I OMAR KHAYYAM'S GRAVE pavement a §food many small tomb-stones, showing that people are buried there, and that the place had been in the past a general grave-yard* AH this is owing to the hereditary sanctity which belongs to the son of an Imam, and we are perhaps indebted to Mo- hammed Marook, no matter what his character may have been, for the preservation of the site of Omar Khayam's burial place; the preservation of the one necessarily preserved the other* In front of the Imamzadah is the garden, with some very old and one or two large trees, but along the edge of the platform in front of Omar Khayam's tomb I found some rose bushes ; it was too late in the season for the roses, but a few hips were still remaining, and one or two of these I secured, as well as the leaves — some of which are here enclosed for you* I hope you will be able to grow them in England ; they will have an interest, as in all probability they are the particular kind of roses Omar Khayam was so fond of watchinjf as he pondered and composed his verses* It may be worth adding that there is also at Nishapur the tomb of another poet who lived about the same time as Omar Khayam — his name was Ferid cd din Attar ; according to Vambcry, he was *^ a great mystic and philosopher* He wrote a work called ^Mantik et Teyr, the Logic of Birds.^ In this the feathered creatures are made to contend in a curious way on the causes of existence, and the Source of Truth* ^Hudhud,^ the All-knowing magical bird of OMAR KHAYYAM'S GRAVE fi Solomon, is inttoduccd, as the Teacher of Birds ; and also Simurgf, the Phoenix of the Orientals, and Symbol of the Highest Ligfht.'^ In this it is understood that the Birds represent Humanity, Hudhud is the Prophet, and the Simurgf stands for Deity* This tomb I shall not have time to visit* Another three marches take us to Meshed, and then we shall be close to the Afgfhan frontier* I am sending; a sketch of Omar Khayam^s tomb to the Htusirated London cKe^ws. Believe me Yours very truly, William Simpson. ^ OMAR KHAYYAM. ¥ **Saycf of sooth, and searcher of dim skies I Lover of Song, and Sun, and Summertide, For -w^hom so many roses bloomed and died ; Tender Interpreter, most sadly wise, Of earth's dumb, inarticulated cries I Time's self cannot estrange us, nor divide ; Thy hand still beckons from the garden-side. Through green vine-garlands, when the Winter dies, **Thy calm lips smile on us, thine eyes are wet ; The nightingale's full song sobs all through thine. And thine in hers — part human, part divine I Among the deathless gods thy place is set. All-wise, but drowsy with Life's mingled Wine, Laughter and Learning, Passion and Regret*" Graham %. Tomsoru Inscribed to A* L» {Andrea) Lang)* ItH **Otmitf 6e3a Sultan of the Persian Song, Familiar friend, whom I have loved so long, Whose volume made my pleasant hiding-place From this fantastic world of right and wrong. ^My youth lies buried in thy verses : lo, I readt and as the haunted numbers f low. My memory turns in anguish to the face That leaned o'er Omar's pages long ago, ** Alas for me, alas for all who weep And wonder at the silence dark and deep That girdles round this little lamp in space No wiser than when Omar fell asleep. **Rest in thy grave beneath the crimson rain Of heart-desired roses. Life is vain. And vain the trembling legends we may trace Upon the open book that shuts again." Justin Hunfly McCarthy* OMAR KHAYYAM, THE ASTRONOMER POET OF PERSIA* By EDWARD FITZGERALD. ¥ MAR KHAYYAM was bom at Naish- kpur, in Khorasan^ in the latter half of out eleventh^ and 6icd within the first quarter of our twelfth ccntary. The slender story of his life is curiously- twined about that of two other very considerable f igfures in their time and country: one of whom tells the story of all three* This was Nizam-ul-Mulk^ Vizyr to Alp Arslan the Son> and Malik Shah the Grandson, of Togfhrul Bcgf the Tartar, who had wrested Persia from the feeble successor of Mahmud the Great, and founded that Seljukian Dynasty which finally roused Europe into the Crusades. This Nizam-ul-Mulk, in his Wasiyat — or Testament — which he wrote and left as a memorial for future statesmen — relates the following;, as quoted in the Calcutta 9?e*ore*ct;, No. 59, from Mirk- hond*s History of the Assassins : — '''One of the greatest of the wise men of Kho- rassan was the Imam Mowaffak of Naishapur, a man hi8:hly honored and reverenced — may God rejoice his soul ; his illustrious years exceeded eighty-five, and it It Ivi OMAR KHA YYAM, was the universal belief that every boy who tead the Koran or studied the traditions in his presence would assuredly attain to honor and happiness. For this cause 6i6 my father send me from Tus to Naishapur with Abd-us-samad^ the doctor of law^ that I migfht employ myself in study and Iearnin§f under the gfuid- ance of that illustrious teacher. Towards me he ever turned an eye of favor and kindness^ and, as his pupil, I felt for him extreme affection and devotion, so that I passed four years in his service. When I first came there, I found two other pupils of mine own age newly arrived, Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-fated Ben Sabbah. Both were endowed with sharpness of wit and the highest natural powers ; and we three formed a close friendship together. When the Imam rose from his lectures, they used to join me, and we repeated to each other the lessons we had heard. Now, Omar was a native of Naishapur, while Hasan Ben Sabbah^s father was one Ali, a man of austere life and practice, but heretical in his creed and doctrine. One day Hasan said to me and to Khayyam, ' It is a universal belief that the pupils of the Imam Mowaffak will attain to fortune. Now, even if we att do not attain thereto, without doubt one of us will ; what then shall be our mutual pledge and bond ? * We answered, ^ Be it what you please.' ' "Well,' he said, * let us make a vow, that to whomsoever this fortune falls, he shall share it equally with the rest, and reserve no pre-eminence for himself.'