Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Edward FitzGerald 180983From His Paraphrase of the Rubáiyát of Omár Khayyám
FitzGEdW
The stars before him from the field of night,
Drives night along with them from Heav’n, and strikes
The Sultán’s turret with a shaft of light.
Methought a Voice within the tavern cried,
“When all the temple is prepar’d within,
Why nods the drowsy worshipper outside?”
And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The tavern shouted—“Open then the door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more.”
With me along the strip of herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of slave and sultán is forgot—
And peace to Máhmúd on his golden throne!
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread—and Thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness—
Oh, wilderness were Paradise enow!
Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come;
Ah, take the cash, and let the credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant drum!
Laughing,” she says, “into the world I blow,
At once the silken tassel of my purse
Tear, and its treasure on the garden throw.”
And those who flung it to the winds like rain,
Alike to no such aureate earth are turn’d
As, buried once, men want dug up again.
Turns ashes—or it prospers; and anon,
Like snow upon the desert’s dusty face,
Lighting a little hour or two—was gone.
Whose portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultán after Sultán with his pomp
Abode his destin’d hour, and went his way.
The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahrám, that great hunter—the wild ass
Stamps o’er his head, but cannot break his sleep.
The rose as where some buried Cæsar bled;
That every hyacinth the garden wears
Dropp’d in her lap from some once lovely head.
Fledges the river lip on which we lean—
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely lip it springs unseen!
To-day of past regrets and future fears:
To-morrow!—Why to-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday’s sev’n thousand years.
That from his vintage rolling Time has prest,
Have drunk their cup a round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.
They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom,
Ourselves must we beneath the couch of earth
Descend—ourselves to make a couch—for whom?
Before we too into the dust descend;
Dust into dust, and under dust, to lie,
Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and—sans end!
Up from Earth’s centre through the
Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the throne of Saturn sate,
And many a knot unravell’d by the road;
But not the master knot of human fate.
There was the veil through which I could not see;
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was—and then no more of Thee and Me.
In flowing purple, of their Lord forlorn;
Nor rolling Heaven, with all his signs reveal’d
And hidden by the sleeve of night and morn.
The veil, I lifted up my hands to find
A lamp amid the darkness; and I heard,
As from Without—“The Me within Thee blind!”
I lean’d, the secret of my life to learn:
And lip to lip it murmur’d—“While you live,
Drink!—for, once dead, you never shall return.”
Articulation answer’d, once did live,
And drink; and ah! the passive lip I kiss’d,
How many kisses might it take—and give!
To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay:
And with its all-obliterated tongue
It murmur’d—“Gently, brother, gently, pray!”
Poor earth from which that human whisper came
The luckless mould in which mankind was cast
They did compose, and call’d him by the name.
For earth to drink of, but may steal below
To quench the fire of anguish in some eye
There hidden—far beneath, and long ago.
And if the wine you drink, the lip you press,
End in what all begins and ends in—Yes;
Think then you are To-day what Yesterday
You were—To-morrow you shall not be less
At last shall find you by the river-brink,
And, offering his cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your lips to quaff—you shall not shrink.
And naked on the air of Heaven ride,
Wer ’t not a shame—wer’t not a shame for him
In this clay carcase crippled to abide?
A Sultán to the realm of Death addrest;
The Sultán rises, and the dark Ferrásh
Strikes, and prepares it for another guest.
Account, and mine, should know the like no more;
The Eternal Sáki from that bowl has pour’d
Millions of bubbles like us, and will pour.
Oh but the long long while the world shall last,
Which of our coming and departure heeds
As the Sev’n Seas should heed a pebble-cast.
Of Being from the well amid the waste—
And lo!—the phantom caravan has reach’d
The Nothing it set out from—Oh, make haste!
I sent my Soul through the invisible,
Some letter of that after-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return’d to me,
And answer’d “I myself am Heav’n and Hell.”
And Hell the shadow of a soul on fire,
Cast on the darkness into which ourselves,
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.
Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with this sun-illumin’d lantern held
In midnight by the Master of the Show;
Upon this checker-board of nights and days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the closet lays.
But right or left as strikes the Player goes;
And He that toss’d you down into the field,
He knows about it all—
Moves on: nor all your piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.
Whereunder crawling coop’d we live and die,
Lift not your hands to It for help—for It
As impotently rolls as you or I.
Y
That Youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close!
The nightingale that in the branches sang,
Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows!
One glimpse—if dimly, yet indeed, reveal’d,
To which the fainting traveller might spring,
As springs the trampled herbage of the field!
Arrest the yet unfolded roll of fate,
And make the stern Recorder otherwise
Enregister, or quite obliterate!
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits—and then
Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire!
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
How oft hereafter rising look for us
Through this same garden—and for one in vain!
Among the guests star-scatter’d on the grass,
And in your blissful errand reach the spot
Where I made one—turn down an empty glass!