Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
Poems of Sentiment: I. TimeRubáiyát
Omar Khayyam (10481131)The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heaven, and strikes
The Sultan’s Turret with a Shaft of Light.
Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried,
“When all the Temple is prepared within,
Why nods the drowsy Worshiper outside?”
The Tavern shouted—“Open then the Door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
And once departed, may return no more.”
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the White Hand of Moses on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.
And Jamshyd’s Seven-ringed Cup where no one knows;
But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine,
And many a Garden by the Water blows.
High-piping Pehleví, with “Wine! Wine! Wine!
Red Wine!”—the Nightingale cries to the Rose,
That sallow cheek of hers t’ incarnadine.
Your Winter garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing.
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,—
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?
And this first Summer month that brings the Rose
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobád away.
With Kaikobád the Great, or Kaikhosrú?
Let Zál and Rustum bluster as they will,
Or Hátim call to Supper—heed not you.
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave and Sultán is forgot—
And Peace to Mahmúd 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 turned
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—is gone.
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultán after Sultán with his Pomp
Abode his destined 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
Dropt 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 Seven thousand Years.
That from his Vintage rolling Time hath 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!
And those that after some To-morrow stare,
A Muezzín from the Tower of Darkness cries,
“Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There.”
Of the Two Worlds so wisely—they are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
Are scattered, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about; but evermore
Came out by the same door wherein I went.
And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow;
And this was all the Harvest that I reaped—
“I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing;
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.
And, without asking, Whither hurried hence!
Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine
Must drown the memory of that insolence!
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate:
And many a Knot unravelled by the Road;
But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.
There was the Veil through which I might 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 revealed
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 leaned, the Secret of my Life to learn;
And Lip to Lip it murmured—“While you live,
Drink!—for once dead, you never shall return.”
Articulation answered, once did live,
And drink; and Ah! the passive Lip I kissed,
How many Kisses might it take—and give!
To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay:
And with its all-obliterated Tongue
It murmured—“Gently, Brother, gently, pray!”
Down Man’s successive generations rolled
Of such a clod of saturated Earth
Cast by the Maker into Human mould?
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.
Of Heavenly Vintage from the soil looks up,
Do you devoutly do the like, till Heaven
To Earth invert you—like an empty Cup.
To-morrow’s tangle to the winds resign,
And lose your fingers in the tresses of
The Cypress-slender Minister of Wine.
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,
Were ’t not a Shame—were ’t not a Shame for him
In this clay carcass 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 Sákí from that Bowl has poured
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 Sea’s self should heed a pebble-cast.
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste—
And Lo!—the phantom Caravan has reached
The Nothing it set out from—Oh, make haste!
About the secret—quick about it, Friend!
A Hair perhaps divides the False and True—
And upon what, prithee, may life depend?
Yes; and a single Alif were the clue—
Could you but find it—to the Treasure-house
And peradventure to The Master too;
Running Quicksilver-like, eludes your pains;
Taking all shapes from Máh to Máhi; and
They change and perish all—but He remains:
Immerst of Darkness round the Drama rolled
Which, for the Pastime of Eternity,
He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold.
Of Earth, and up to Heaven’s unopening Door,
You gaze To-day, while You are You—how then
To-morrow, when You shall be You no more?
Of This and That endeavor and dispute;
Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.
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 “Up-and-Down” by Logic I define,
Of all that one should care to fathom, I
Was never deep in anything but—Wine.
Reduced the Year to better reckoning?—Nay,
’T was only striking from the Calendar
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday.
Came shining through the Dusk an Angel Shape
Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and
He bid me taste of it; and ’t was—the Grape!
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute;
The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice
Life’s leaden metal into Gold transmute;
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul
Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.
Blaspheme the twisted tendril as a Snare?
A Blessing, we should use it, should we not?
And if a Curse—why, then, Who set it there?
Scared by some After-reckoning ta’en on trust,
Or lured with Hope of some Diviner Drink,
To fill the Cup—when crumbled into Dust!
One thing at least is certain—This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies:
The Flower that once has blown forever dies.
Before us passed the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too.
Who rose before us, and as Prophets burned,
Are all but Stories, which awoke from Sleep
They told their comrades, and to Sleep returned.
Some letter of that After-life to spell;
And by-and-by my Soul returned to me,
And answered, “I Myself am Heaven and Hell:”
And Hell the Shadow from 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 the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show;
Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
But Here or There as strikes the Player goes;
And he that tossed you down into the Field,
He knows about it all—H
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 cooped we live and die,
Lift not your hands to It for help—for It
As impotently moves as you or I.
And there of the Last Harvest sowed the Seed;
And the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.
To-morrow’s Silence, Triumph, or Despair:
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why;
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.
Over the flaming shoulders of the Foal
Of Heaven Parwín and Mushtarí they flung,
In my predestined Plot of Dust and Soul.
If clings my Being—let the Dervish flout:
Of my Base metal may be filed a Key
That shall unlock the Door he howls without.
Kindle to Love, or Wrath consume me quite,
One Flash of It within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright.
A conscious Something to resent the yoke
Of unpermitted Pleasure, under pain
Of Everlasting Penalties, if broke!
Pure Gold for what He lent him dross-allayed—
Sue for a Debt he never did contract,
And cannot answer—Oh the sorry trade!
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin!
And e’en with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blackened—Man’s forgiveness give—and take!
Slunk hunger-stricken Ramazán away,
Once more within the Potter’s house alone
I stood, surrounded by the Shapes of Clay.
That stood along the floor and by the wall:
And some loquacious Vessels were; and some
Listened, perhaps, but never talked at all.
My substance of the common Earth was ta’en
And to this Figure moulded, to be broke,
Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again.”
Would break the Bowl from which he drank in joy;
And He that with his hand the Vessel made
Will surely not in after Wrath destroy.”
Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make:—
“They sneer at me for leaning all awry:
What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?”
I think a Súfi pipkin—waxing hot—
“All this of Pot and Potter—Tell me, then,
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?”
Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell
The luckless Pots he marred in making—Pish!
He ’s a Good Fellow, and ’t will all be well.”
My Clay with long Oblivion is gone dry;
But fill me with the old familiar Juice,
Methinks I might recover by-and-by.”
The little Moon looked in that all were seeking:
And then they jogged each other, “Brother! Brother!
Now for the Porter’s shoulder-knot a-creaking!”
And wash the Body whence the Life has died,
And lay me, shrouded in the living Leaf,
By some not unfrequented Garden-side.
Of Vintage shall fling up into the Air,
As not a True-believer passing by
But shall be overtaken unaware.
Have done my credit in this World much wrong:
Have drowned my Glory in a shallow Cup,
And sold my Reputation for a Song.
I swore—but was I sober when I swore?
And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand
My threadbare Penitence apieces tore.
And Robbed me of my Robe of Honor—Well,
I wonder often what the Vintners buy
One half so precious as the stuff they sell.
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 revealed,
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-scattered on the Grass,
And in your joyous errand reach the spot
Where I made One—turn down an empty Glass!