The True Omar Khayam

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Omar Khayyam[C, J.E.]The true Omar Khayam.

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THE TRUECMAR mAYYMii

by

o C

1879


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1870] Reforms in Asiatic Turhey. G49they were of old, for the sympathyand protection afforded of lateto the Christians of Turkey by theEuropean powers have only exacer-bated their hatred of them. Nota Mussulman beofgar meets a non-Mussulman householder in thetowns of Asiatic Turkey withouttaking ' le haut du pave,' andmaking him walk in the gutter.It is true that a Christian orJewish householder may be amember of one of the provincialcouncils, all of which have hadfor many years the illusorysemblance of being composed ofmixed elements ; but he is never-theless contemptuously ordered tosigntheir decrees, even when the pur-port of those decrees is prejudicialto the legitimate interests of thenon-Mussulman classes of the popu-lation. The Turk is thus the lordof creation, and the Christianand Jew are his retainers. HisMussulman faith is a religion ofpride, requiring no aliment, butliving on itself, and that pridemust be abased before any reformgrowing out of the Christian doc-trine of equality can be successfullyintroduced. Like the haughty ex-clusiveness of the Jewish polityof old, the insolent usurpation ofsuperiority by Islamism must ulti-mately cause its own downfall ; butthe time may not yet have comefor such a sweeping change in theTurkish domination in WesternAsia, and the means of producingit, though they have certainly nowbeen called into existence, may nothave reached that degree of matu-rity which is necessaiy for its com-pletion, if violent convulsions areto be avoided in effecting it.

Notwithstanding the danger, how-ever, that amicable relations mightsutler by our insistance, and that seri-ous disturbances might be producedin the country by compliance with it,still the only advisable course forEngland to follow with regard toAsiatic Turkey, if the Anglo-Turk-ish Convention is to become morethan a dead letter, must be tomerge her chivalrous courtesy intoa stern declaration that her counselswill be enforced in the event oftheir being disregarded.' ThePorte, having seen the deplorableexcesses of the Turks in the latewar glossed over and palliated inEngland, may have conceived, bydint of impunity, the erroneousnotion that England will assume noother tone, whatever ultimate answermay be given to her advice ; and, ifthe negotiations regarding the ap-plication of reforms to the Asiaticprovinces are not carried on byEngland in a manner provingthat no more trifling with thesubject will be allowed, it will soonbecome evident that only onealternative will remain open toher, namely, the repudiation of therespor sibilities assumed by herin the Anglo-Turkish Convention.Those responsibilities having beenvery properly made conditionalon the application of reforms, sucha conclusion ofthe question would beperfectly justifiable in itself ; and itwould be less unsatisfactory thanto ffo on receivinof vacuous assu-ranees of the fulfilment of a con-dition which is opposed by toomany obstacles to admit the proba-bility, or even the possibility, of itsbeing fully realised under the Turk-ish domination in Western Asia.

S.


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1879] The Tnie Omar Khayam. 651to recognise. What we feel mostsui-e of, reads like the product ofleisure hours : his moods vary, heis not always consistent ; he willsay the same thing in two or threeshapes, or will contradict himselfin quatrains which we cannot helpbelieving to he genuine if thereever existed a Khayam. Andthough not much is known of hislife, there is quite enough to esta-blish his ideutit}^. He was an as-tronomer and mathematician, andhis school-boy connection withNizam ul Mulk, and Hasan ibnSabbah, gave him a place inhistory. The Calcutta Review ofMarch 1858 tells us all that isknown of his life, which is repeatedin Mr. Fitzgerald's pi-eface : buthis fame, which extends whereverPersian is read, rests on hispoetry.

This consists only of rubais,.i,.e.foui^-iinjj stanzas nr iiuatrains, fromthe Arabic numeral 'aria,' four.There are great numbLrs of thesecurrent under his name, of whichthere seems no doubt that the largerportion are spurious. We have col-lected 1,040 of them from the ma-terial within our reach. The MS.copies are rare, both in Europeand the East, though some of theolder MSS. are so short that theycould be transcribed in a few^ hoursby an apt penman. Still they arenot as rare as Mr. Fitzgeraldseems to consider. We have seeneleven MS. copies, of which sevenare in England and four in Paris.Then there is M. Nicholas'sedition of his text, published inParis, 1868. Of these collectionsthe smallest contains 158 rubais,the largest 516. Some of therubais are mere paraphrases one ofanother, and some, not many, arerepetitions ; but after all possibleweeding has been done, there willremain at least a thousand whichwe have collected from these MSS.,and a few minor sources, claiming tobe the work of Khayam. The opinion

ofthose best qualified tojudge wouldplace the number of nndoubtedlygenuine quatrains at about 250 to300. The copyists seem to havebeen calmly indifferent as to trueor false readings. Helped verymuch by the fame of this particularpoet, this has been for ages thecommon form of epigram in theEast ; and rubais, scored by animitator on the margin of onecopy, have been included in thetext of the next ; or the copyist, ifsomething of a poet, has thoughtwell enough of work of his own asto give it the chance of immortalityunder the famous name. By someprocesses of this kind extraneousmatter has been lent wholesaleto Khayam, till the original isin danger of being lost in themass of additions. On the otherhand, we find rubais previouslyknown to us as Khayam's in theworks of well-known poets, suchas Hafiz (ia Brockhaus's carefuledition), Anwari, Sulman SavahSciadi, and, above all, a mysteriousperson named Afzul Kashi, whoin style and mode of thoughthas very much in common withKhayam.

Besides manuscript evidence, thetests most to be trusted are sim-plicity of language, perfection inrhythm and sound, and epigram-matic completeness. Kliayam wasa clear-headed person, and masterof his own language in its bestdays, and we may discard rubais atonce when there is looseness of gripin the thought. We do not believehe wrote the following :Until the loved one gives me the soul-

entrancing wine,The heavens will sho-vver no kisses uponmy head and feet.They tell me to repent, when repentance's

hour shall come

:

If God Himself command it not, be sureI'll not repent.

Here the first two lines refer todivine ecstasy, and the last two arederived from a saying of Khayam,


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652 The True Omar KJiayam. [Maywliicli we find in other places, thatthe command to repent and renouncewmjjiêvil, or whatever it inaj^bejmust come from the God who madehim and ]ii> f;i]lilik' nature.Each rubai is complete in itself,and has no connection with whatgoes before or follows after. Thefirst three lines introduce tlie sub-ject, and the fourth is thus de-sci'ibed by Mirza Saib : ' The lastline of_ a rubai drives the nailthrough the heart.' They arearranged by the terminal lettei'S ofthe rhyming word or phrase : allthose ending in a are classed to-gether, and followed by tliose in i.It occasionally happens that suc-ceeding verses take up the samesubject, but this is rare, and one isnever a continuation of the other.We quote two from M. Iîcholas :

227.They have gone, and of the gone no onecomes backFrom behind the secret veil, to bring youwordThat matter will be opened to your need,

not prayers :For what is prayer without faith and ear-nest longing ?

22S.Go, thou, cast dust on the heaven above

us,Drink ye wine, and beauty seek to-day What use in adoration ? What need for

prayer?For of all the gone no one comes back

again.Here we have in the latter versesomething very like a contradictionof the former, certainly written ina different mood, possibly by anotherhand. It is the last which has thegenuine Khayam flavour.

Mr. Fitzgerald's No. 69 (of the1872 edition) :Strange, is it not? that of the myriadswhoBefore us pass'd the door of Darkness

through,Not one returns to tell us of the roadWhich to discover we nnist travel toois rather the expression of anidea found in many rubais than the

translation of any one, and it lacksthe point. It would be easy enoughto put ' the door of darkness ' intoPersian, but we have not found itthere. Khayam does not stop towonder, but he does make somepractical suggestions. He says inmany shapes, 'While you live enjoyall that is.' The following, which isas close as any to Mr. Fitzgerald,may be taken as a specimen of therest

:

Of all the trav'llers on that weary road,^Vhere's one returned to bring us news

of it?Take heed that here, in feigned goodness,youPass nothing pleasant byyou'll not comeback.More interesting than parallels of

this kind may be an examination ofwhat we have found in Khayam,with occasional references to Mr.Fitzgerald. Our translations are asnear as possible literal, and comefrom what we believe to be thebest reading of the given rubai.We have not followed any one MS,The leading ideas are pleasure,death, and fate^^ and his predomi-nani_atatea_Qf .jaind . are , the sen-suous^ the gruesome, and the rebel-lious. He mocks, questions, lamentsênjoys; is a person of varyingmoods, strong feelings, and remark-able boldness ; but hejias some sortof belief at the bottom of it all.He has no doubt about his enjoy-ment of the pleasant things roundhim, while they last. He can chafeagain>t ilie M>rrows of life and itsinL\iuililc fiul, the folly of thg;_hy|>oci ito, ami tliu cruelty of fate but lie never doubts the existence,,of an (jjipressor, nor questions thereality m' ^-ori-ow any more thanthat (4' death. He can feelstrongly the charms of nature

:

The day is sweet, its air not cold nor hot.From the garden's cheek the clouds havewashed the dew

;

The bulbul softly to the yellow rose3Iakes his lament, and says that we must

drink.


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1879] The True Omar Khayam. 65SAgaiuTlio now day's breath is sweet on the face

of the rose

:

A lovely face among the orchards too issweet

;

But all your talk of yesterday is onlysad.Be glad, leave yesterday, to-day's sosweet.

This is on spring time :To-day, when gladness overpowers the

earth.Each living heart towards the desert

turns

;

On every branch shine Moses' hands to-day,In every loud breath breathes Jesus' soul.Of these allusions, the hand ofMosessignifies the white blossoms ofspring, and the sonl or breath ofJesus is His power of giving life tothe deadthe shape taken in Per-sian by all metaphorical allusions toour Lord.We find in the Persian other twovariations of this ; but we think itthe best, and Mr. Fitzgerald hasused it in the fourth of his stanzas :Now the New Year, reviving old desires.The thoughtful soul to solitude retiresWhen the white hand of Moses on the

boughPuts out, and Jesus from the ground

suspires.Here is another kind of pleasure :Drink wine, for it is everlasting life ;It is the very harvest of our youthIn time of roses, wine, and giddy friends.Be happy, drink, for that is life indeed.Of the love verses of the collectionthe following are specimens :When my heart caught thy fragrance onthe breeze.It left me straight and followed after

thee.Its sad master it no more remembers.Once loving thee, thy nature it partakes.Each drop of blood which trickles from

mine eyeWill cause a tulip to spring freshly up.And the heart-sick lover, seeing that.Will get hope of thy good faith.For love of thee I'll bear all kinds of

blame.Be woe on me if I should break thisfaith.

If all life long thy tyranny holds good.Short will the time from now to judgment

be.

Love which is feigned has no lustreLike a half-dead tire it burns not

:

Nights, days, months, years, to the loverBring him no rest or peace, no food or

sleep.Both of these last might be claimedby those who hold the mystic inter-pretation of Omar's wine and loveas proof of their theory. He cer-tainly wrote little about love. Hissense of the beauty of nature ismarred perpetually by the thoughtof the death and decay in store forall.See the morning breeze has torn the

garment of the rose.With its loveliness the nightingale is wildlyglad.

Sit in the rose's shade, but know, that manyroses,

Fair as this is, have fallen on earth andmixed with it.Another in much the same mood :The cloud's veil rests on the rose's face

still,Deep in my heart is longing for that wine.Sleep ye not yet, this is no time for sleep.Give wine, beloved, for there's sunshine

still.

Wine is the favourite theme ; weget wearied wTtE the constantrecurrence of the praise of wine,and with exhortations to drink andbe drunken, through hundreds ofmusical lines ; till at hist, withoutagreeing^with those who Took onTltall as simply a figure for Divine love,' the wine of the love of God,' wecome_to regard It as representingmore than mere sensualpleasure. Weniust rememlDerthat drinkinghad inthe East at that time no vulgarjisso-ciation^. Wine parties were commonin the houses of the great men,and in the courts of the princes.We have heard much of those ofHarun-al-Rashid and the Barma-kides, and we learn that such par-ties owed great part of their charmto music and song, witty talk, andsparkling verse. ' Vers de societe 'were then, and have always been, a


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654 The True Omar Khayam. [Mayrage in Oriental good society. Thesewinejparties were in fact the nur-series of all the intellectual life ofthe time, which was unconnectedwiFn religion, and did^ much tocounteract the dullness of orthodoxMohammedan life. So little growthto be got in what was lawful, it wassmall wonder that stirring mindsturned from it ; and a,s includingso much else that they valued, wefind these idolising the pleasurewhich seemed so fertile as a meta-phor for the rest. This seems tous to account for a great deal ofKhayam's wine. Still there aresome good quatrains which seemundeniably mystic, and modernexplanations given in the East pointthat way. But we do not believethat Khayam habitually used hisown language in the strained andartificial sense of the great Sufiwriters. We believe that, in as faras he was mystic, he was so at firsthand, and was certainly much elseinto the bargain. We find themore mystic verses are generallythose of least authority, and most ofthe genuine verses on wine are expli-cable on the hypothesis that _ itmeans social enjoyment. The re-iterated ' Drink, you win sleep in thedustj^seems to show that the winewas something practical. ' Drink,the past day comes not back again;'' time will not return on its steps ;' other moons will rise L'^J.np onestays or returns,' all this would bewithout point if the wine were somedraught of love, or longino for thedivine which might be enjoyedequally in any stage of being. Thesame may be said for the following :' I am the slave of that comingmoment when the Saki says,Take another cup, and I shallnot be able.' This moment is thehour of death, putting an end tohuman pleasure in whatever shapeour poet cared most for it.

Khayam's view of death is co-loured by a strong dash of ma-terialism ; whatever he may think,

he talks of nothing; but the, deathof the bodya kind of materialismcommon enough in Eastern thought,and which even its mystics neverescape. In pious biography nospiritual grace is ever conferredwithout its visible signa fragmentof dirty paper on which is inscribedthe name of God, a piece of roastfowl from a master's mouth, a pi'ay-ing mat, a well-worn blanketsuchare the media by which the highestspiritual graces reach the soul ofman. No wonder that there shouldbe confusion between seen and un-seen ; that Eastern mysticism isopen to all sorts of interpretation,and that a shrewd, many-sideddoubter like Khayam has beenclassed as a mystic while contem-plating death mainly from the grue-some side of bodily corruption anddecay.

He.refkrs .ag'iiin and again toburial, the washing of the body,the making of the bier, the loosen-ing of joints, the separation of themembers, the ^xin^.. with earthjand the return to the elementsbeing used in the course of timeby the builder and the potter tobuild walls, porticos, and j)alaces,

malie jars, jugs, and pots: theofuture he contemplates with niosicouaplacency is that of returning tohis old haunts and old friends inthe form of a wine ju^, when he issure^tFewTne wifl revive some sortof life in him. The grievance tohim of death is not the dim futurefor his soul, but rather the leavingof pleasant things in his mouth andbyhis side. When he thinks of thefuture, death is no trouble to him:I am not the man to fear to pass away,That half to me better than this half seems ;God as a loan my life has given me

;

I'll give it back when payment time shallcome.And another, which Mr Fitzgerald's

readers will recogniseIn the sphere's circle, far in unseen depths,Is a cup which to all is given in tiirn

;

Sigh ye not then, when it to thy turn comes,Its wine drink gladly, for 'tis time to diink.


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1879] The True Omar Khayam. 655Of these, the first ia certainly ge-nuine, the second doubtful. Butthere is very little of this strain inproportion to the talk about thedecay of the body and its after-wards serving_natural purposes :AVhorevor there is a gfirden of tulips or roses,Know that thej' grQW_iVqm_Uie_,red blood

of kingsAnd every violet tuft which is springingFrom earth, was once a mole on some faircheek.

Or this :As I mused in the workshop of the potterI saw the master standing by his wheel

;

Boldly he-ffiade covers and handles for hisjarsFrom the head of the kin^ or the foot of thebeggar.

The following is found in every MS.we have seen

:

To the potter's shop yesterday I went,Noisy or mute, two thousand pots I saw.There came a sudden shout from one of

them' \Miere is the potter, the seller, the buyer

of pots ?We would draw the i^eader's atten-tion to stanzas 82, 83 and 87 of Mr.Fitzgerald's translation, for whichthis one rubai, beat out thin andotherwise freely dealt with, hasserved as foundation. We have sofar seen no other rubai we couldconnect with Mr. Fitzgerald's from82 to 88 inclusive.As another specimen of the way

the translation has been made wequote two beautiful stanzas on thispart of the subjectdeath and thefuturethough they have less todo with it in the Persian than inthe English:

66.I sent my soul through the invisible,Some letter of that after life to spell.And by-and-bye my soul returned to me,And answeredI myself am heaven and

heU.67.

Heaven's but the bosom of fulfilled desire.And hell the shadow of a soul on fire,Lost in the darkness into which ourselves,So late emerg'd from, shall so soon expire,No. 66 is found in all the oldestMS S. we have seen in this shape:

On the first day, my heart above thespheresWas seeking pen and tablet, hell andheaven,

Till the right-thinking master said at last,' Pen, tablet, heaven and hell are -with

thee.'No. 67 is also undoubtedly genuine,and, in its Persian form, found inevery copy we have seen, with oneexception

:

The universe is a girdle for our wornbodies,The Oxus but a trace of our blood-stainedtears

Hell is a spark from our senseless sorrow,And heaven a breath from a moment ofease.

These translations are absolutelyliteral. We feel dissatisfied withMr. Fitzgerald's verses, fine as theyare, for in them we get some ideasthe Persian lines do not contain,and lose many that they do.The shadow on the darkness fromwhich we have come and to whichwe shall return, we seem to havemet with somewhere, but not inKhayam. We lose the ' right-think-ing master,' who is a striking fea-ture in the Persian in the onerubai, and in the other we lose thestupendous claim the Persian poetis making, as well as the peculiarbeauty of what he has to say ofheaven and hell.

After this we shall not expectmuch deference from Khayam tothe religious system in which hehad been educated, nor much recog-nition of eternal consequences tofollow the keeping or breaking Mo-hammedan laws ; what we wonderat is the heed he seems to take tothem after all, and the presence ofa rueful semi-penitent strain insome very authentic verses. Itwould seem that with all his bold-ness he never succeeded in con-vincing himself that he was in theright, and that his attitude of mindtowards God,, the law, and moralobligation, was that of i^ebellion,not negation. Hence what we havesaid about Fate. One of his main


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656 The True Omar Khayam. [Majideafl Is Fate's cruelty, and liis mostfrecLuent state of mind the rebellious.This is liis originality ; others havemoaned and lamented^, ,hfta,tt.acks>and boldly. Fate is immutable ; hesg^s:Long, long ago, what is to be was fixed,The pen rests ever now from good and bad

;

That must be, which He fixed immutably,And senseless is our grief and striving here.In a cruder form, ' whether youdrink or not, if you are bound forhell you will not enter heaven.'Fate appears commonly under thetitle M.the. ' wheel of heaven,' and^the doings of the wheel are veryunsatisfactory :This tyrannous wheel which is set on highHas never loosed hard knots for any man,And when it sees a heart which bears a

scar,It adds another sear to that sore place.

Again

:

Never has a day been prosperous to meNever has a breath blown sweetly towardsme;And never was my breath drawn in with joy,But the same day my hand was filled with

grief.But we doubt the authenticity ofthese; beside manuscript argumentthe tone is too much of a lament.Khayam prefers to accuse the wheelof beinsr' ungrateful, unfaithful, andunkindly.' In the followmg he de-precates its ill will in a whimsicalstyle, of which we have other spe-cimens :

wheel, I am not content with thy turn-ings;

Free me, I am not fit to be thy slave.The fool and the unwise you favour mostWhy not me too ? I am not over-wise.Fate favours fools, it is indifferentto the sighs of its victims, it rubssalt on wounds, it adds sore to sore,it delights in ruthlessly cuttingshort the moment when, by help ofwine or lore, a man has drawn inhis breath in ease ' that breath re-turns not.' It is fertile in devicesto cause and prolong suffering inlife, and ever holds death as afinal blow over every headthe one

certainty amid the changing possi-bilities of both worlds.About the origin of things, theonly fact of which Khayam is quitesure is that they were not made toplease him.About existence, friend, why fret thee ?And weary soul and heart with senseless

thought ?Enjoy it all, pass gaily through the worldThey_took no counsel with thee at the fixst.Far better it would have been not tohave come at all. ' If those whohave not come only knew what weendure from life, they would stayaway.' Again, ' We come withanguish, we live in astonishment,we go with pain, and we know notthe use of this coming, being, andgoing.' Stronger even than theabove is the following :If coming had been of myself, I'd not have

come,Or, if going was of myself. I would not go ;But, best of all if in this world of earthWere no coming, no being, no going.He is sad enough, and we know ofno outward cause for his sadness.When he speaks of his favouritewine, he says, ' Slander it not, it isnot bitter : the bitterness is that ofmy life.' Though many of themoaning rubais are interpolations(Khayam's style was rather boldthan plaintive), it is he who criesout : ' Oh, oh, for that heart in whichthere is no burning ' and, ' As mineeyes are never without tears, I musteither die or sorrow will overwhelmme.'

After this we must either suspecthim of being sad for sheer idleness,or believe that he was oppressed bythe awfulness and weariness of lifeand its mystery of evil to theextent of real suffering. His long-ings towards orood were real andsincere ; but meeting with deathand sin, and making no more ofthem than other men, he was, per-haps, the readier to despair that hehad put his estimate of the good inlife very low. The pleasant thinghe sings of could not help him


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1879] The True Omar Khayam. 667ninch in lessening tbo pains ofdoubt, or in softening his discontentat the hy230crisy and wrong abouthim. He says :Of the etenift} secret none has loosed the

knot,Nor trod one single step outside himself.I look from the pupil to the master.And each one born of -woman helpless see.From deepest heart of earth to Saturn's

heightI solved all problems of th e, universe ;I leapt out free from bonds of fraud and

lies.Yea, every knot was loosed but that ofDeath.Of the eternal past and future, why-Discourse ? they pass our powers of wit

and will

;

There's nought like wine in pleasant hours,be sure :Of every tangle it doth loose the knots.

This last has the mocking tone in^hich he scoutecTaEThe^learSed bthis day who chose to discourse ofthe past and future, of which theyknew so very little. They mightnot unfairly retort that his wineand cupbearer had not saved himfrom the sorrows of life. However,he mocks on : it is his pleasure. Hemocks at believers and unbelievers,priests and mystics ; and when hecomes to moral responsibility, hemocks at the God in whom he be-lieves, as it were, in spite of him-self. In the following quatrain hemocks at the Moslem Paradise :They tell us in heaven that houris will be,And also honey, sugar, and pui-e wine

;

Fill then the wine cup and place it in myhand.

For better is one coin than boundlesscredit.

Here he uses the promise of theKoran as an excuse :We hear of houris in heaven and fountainsThat will run with honey and pure ^v ine :If here we worship these, what is the

harm.Since at the end of time we meet the same ?It is no inanimate wheel of heavenwhich is ultimately responsible forhis sorrow, for he says, ' Do notaccuse the wheel of causing joy and

sorrow, good and evil , for verilyit is more helpless than you are,'and he holds the Creator respon-sibTe For evil as for the rest.Some God has fashioned tlnis my body's

clay;He must have known the acts I shoiddperform

:

No sin of mine but comes from laws of his

:

What reason then for burning fires at last ?He asks what is evil ? what is sin ?The law taught him that somethings were permitted, some for-bidden ; and he asks why ? Whatis it that makes this action rightand that wrong, when there is notmuch to choose between them, andwhen towards both he has the samestrong natural desire, which afterall seems so much more like a Di-vine command than the capriciousutterances of the Mollahs. Stillsin exists ; he can but rebel ; he canconquer nothing, not even peace ofmind. He saysAbstain then from impossible commands.How can the soul triumph o'er the body ?Wine is my sin, but so is abstinence for-

bidden.To sum all up, he says, ' Hold the cupawry, and spill it not.'

What are we that he should speak evilof us,And make a hundred of each one of ourfaults ?We are but his mirrors, and what he seesin usAnd calls good or evil that sees he in him-self.

After this we can at least under-stand how it came to pass thatKhayam was very miserable. Wemust now quote Mr. Fitzgerald :

78. ._Wli.i; Milt of senseless nothingto provokeA^CLiii^oiMus sometning to resent the yokeOf unpermitted pleasure under painOf everlasting penalties if broke.

79-What from his helpless creatures be re-paid

Pure gold for what he lent us dross-allay'd,Sue for a debt we never did contract,AmFcnniiot'arisweri OE^'the' sorry trade


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658 The True Omar Khayam. [May80.

Oh Thou who didst with pitfall and withgin , .Beset the road I was to wander in,Thou wilt not with predestined evil round

Enmesh, and then impute my fall to sin 81.

Oh Thou, who man of baser earth didstmake,And e'en with Paradise devise the snake.

For all the sin wherewith the face of manIs blacken'd, man's forgiveness give, and

takeRebellious as Khayam certainly was,we do not think he went as far asthis. Mr. Fitzgerald's stanzas 78, 79are a free rendering of various thingsscattered through the Persian, whichhardly have quite the same meaningin their own places, those we haverecently quoted being the nearestwe know to them. Khayam has atleast the grace to be miserable, notjaunty, when he says : ' We arehelpless : thou hast made us whatwe arewe sinand suffer pro-'foundly, but do not see any wayout of it.' For the 80th we findthe followingIn my path in many places thou layest

snares,Saying, I will take thee if thou put foot in

one.No least atom of the world is empty of thylaw

;

I but obey that law, and thou callest me asinner.We think the 8ist is a misconcep-

tion of the meaning of a Persianline. We speak under correction,for the readings of the various MSS.differ so greatly that this may be atranslation of something we do notknow ; but we doubt it, as we seemto have the material of which themost important line was com-pounded.We remember several quatrainson repentance. One is as follows :Asthis world is false, I'll be nothing else.And only remember pleasure and bright

wine :To me they say, May God give thee re-pentance He does it not ; but did He, I would not

obey.

Here we have the Mohammedannotion of repentance as the gift ofGodj and such repentance is strongon the practical side of thexemiD-cia-tion of evil. Khayam speaks ofrepentance^ _^as^ somet]nn^ putjidehim, butjoften adds_ that he would,rebel against it if __ it...were givenhim. Another on the same sub-ject :May there be wine in my hand for ever,And ever love of beauty in my head.To me they say, May God give thee re-

pentance Say He gives it, I'll not do it, far be itfrom me.The following is, we think, whereIMr. Fitzgerald has got his lineabout forgiveness. We have nonotion where the snake. Paradise,and blackened face may come from,they are not unlikely allusions, butwe do not know them :Oh Thou, knower of the secret thoughts of

every man,Thou in the time of weakness the helper ofevery man,

God, give me repentance and accept theexcuse I bring,

giver of repentance and receiver of theexcuses of every man

This last line Mr. Fitzgerald seemsto have read

repent ye and excuse thyself to everymana sense which we believe the Persianwill not naturally convey ; but weagain remai'k that Mr. Fitzgeraldmay have had another quatrain oranother reading of this. Khayamwas bold enough at times, but wedo not think he reached the pointof offering forgiveness to God forman's sins. What we have justquoted is net bold at all, beingevidently a prayer for a bettermind. Its autheuticity is doubtful,however. The following is a moretrustworthyexpression of Khayam'sbetter moodEver at war with passion am I. What can

I do ?Ever in pain for my actions I am. What

can I do ?


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1870] The True Omar KJiayam. 659True thou may'st pardon all the sin, but

for the shameThat thou hast seen what I have done,

what can I do ?Another

:

Though I've ne'er threaded thy obedience'spearl,And though through sin I have not soughtthy face,

Still of thy mercy hopeless am I not,For I have never called the great One two.Here he hopes for mercy, spite ofsin, because he has never attackedthe unity of God.Of course, in such a collection,much stress cannot be laid uponone or two quatrains, but thereis much else to justify us inholding that our poet was not

without some faith in God andduty. In many respects Khayamcontradicts preconceived notions ofOriental character. Though fondof pleasure, he was not attracted bya sensual Paradise. He was notindifferent to deathhe was notpassive under the hand of Fate, orat all remarkable for resignation.He is a discovery, a light on theold Eastern world in its reality,which proves, as do most realities,different from w^hat suppositionsand theories would make them.Finally, though we have at timesdisagreed with Mr. Fitzgerald inreading Khayam, we are not muchthe less grateful for his poem andthe introduction.

J. E. C.

VOL. XIX.NO. CXIII. NEW SEKIES. 3 A


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660 [May

THE DARK SIDE OF A BRIGHT PICTURE.By a Colorado Settler.

A BRIGHT sunny picture of thisland of colours appeared inyour pages a few months since,descriptive of her gentler and moreinviting moods ; but Colorado, likeevery other country, has a darkerside ; there are thunder-storms aswell as sunshine ; waterspouts andhurricanes as well as spotless skiesof ethereal blue.A few facts from my own ex-perience will quickly open yourreaders' eyes to some of the draw-backs of the country, and those whodesire to form an impartial judg-ment will be able to see both sidesof their subject. We had a long-talk about it a few eveningssince at Charpiot's, myself andtwo friends, D. and C, the lat-ter of whom is on the point ofleaving for England in disgust.You shall hear the story told, justas we three Englishmen discussedit over our dinner at Denver.

' So you are really going back toEngland, C. ? '

'Most decidedly,' he replied, 'assoon as I can get even a moderateprice for my ranches.'

' Not much money about,' ob-served D.

' Money ' replied C, ' not adollar, I do believe. Tax-time cameonly the other day, the dollars havegone East, as they always do : thoseYankees take good care of that.An ingenious piece of mechanismis this Government for robbing thepeople. The party that rules isdetermined to know nothing butdollars. Nothing like a huge sumof cash to handle. When Americatook to selling State-lands mensuspected what it would come to.But when they undertake to payoff a monstrous National Debt ina generation Faugh the trick

is too thinthe rascality too trans-parent. There's no public spirit inthis country ; men are but foolishand ignorant dupes of patrioticcharlatans and hypocritical swind-lers.'

' Halloa why, C, when did youacquire this bombastic slang ? Ishall see you yet stumping it.'

' It would have made Job acarpet-bagger had he passed three3^ears in this country, such three ^years as I have,' answered C. ' Myown school-fellow drew the stock-ing over my eyes. I knew himwhen he was himself as true apiece of metal as ever rang. Buthe bought a ranch with my moneyfrom which no one ever got a dollarbefore or since. The purchase, nodoubt, brought several hundreds tohim ; to me it brought nothingbut vexation and disquiet. Hadnot my poor little wards clunground my neck I would have goneback home by the next train. Idid make the attempt. The wordsof an intelligent person, whom Imet in the train on the Rio Granderailway, arc always sounding inmyears. You'll go back, sir, you'llgo back. I have almost turnedguinea-fowl from the constant re-currence of those ominous words tomy mind. I suggest that usefulbird as the crest of the new Statethe Centenniala guinea-hen.''You look well, C.,' interposedD. 'You look, I should say, tenyears younger than when you came.The climate, sir, is splendid. Giveme six months on the Divide or inthe mountains, and six monthsat Denver or Colorado springs ; Isay there is no such climate in theworld. You are always in healthand spirits ; the children rude andboisterous from too great vitality.


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The True Omar Khayam