Rubaiyat Tuesday: Floral poetry from a Persian master
by
Jacqueline
December 30, 2008
These are from "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam," translated by Edward Fitzgerald.
This famous long poem is divided into 110 stanzas; after every four lines, there's a new number.
VII
Come fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring.
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling.
The Bird of Time has but a little way,
To fly -- and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing!
VIII
And Look -- A Thousand blossoms with the day
Woke -- and a thousand scatter'd into clay:
And the first Summer month that broings the Rose
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away.
XIII
Look to the rose that blows about us -- "Lo!
Laughing," she says "Into the world I blow!
At once the silken Tassel of my Purse
Tear; and its Treasure on the Garden throw."
XVIII
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its lap from some once lovely Head.
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