The Sufistic Quatrains Of Omar Khayyam Part 92

452.

We have some wine, O cupbearer! Let us rejoice in the presence of the well-beloved [the Divinity] and in the noise of the morning. Expect not on our part the renunciation of Nessouh, O cupbearer! How long shall I speak to you of the story of Noe, O cupbearer?

Bring, bring me happily the repose of my soul [the wine], O cupbearer!

453.

I see neither the means of joining myself to Thee, nor the possibility of living for the s.p.a.ce of a breath separated from Thee. I have not the courage to drive out the torments I endure. Oh! how difficult my plight, how strange my grief, how exquisite my pain!

454.

Now is the time to drink the morning wine; the noise makes itself heard, O cupbearer! Now we are ready, O cupbearer! here is the wine, behold the tavern. Could a moment like this be for prayer? Silence, O cupbearer!

Leave thy discourse upon tradition and upon devotion; drink, O cupbearer!

455.

Here is the noise of the morning, O idol, whose coming brings happiness! Chant the refrain and bring the wine; for [you know it], the constant sequence of these months of Tir and Di have overturned upon the earth a thousand potentates like Djem, a hundred thousand like to Kai.

456.

Guard thyself from being coa.r.s.e in the eyes of all drinkers, guard thyself from acquiring a bad reputation before the sages, and drink wine; for, whether you drink or not, if you belong to the fire of h.e.l.l, you would not know how to enter Paradise.

457.

I wish that G.o.d would reconstruct the world, I wish that He would actually reconstruct it and that I might see Him at the work. I wish that He would blot my name from the register of life, or that out of His mysterious treasure, He would swell the joys of my existence.

458.

O G.o.d! open to me the door of Thy benefits. Make me come to my fortune finally, that I may not be beholden to Thy creatures. Oh! render me drunk with wine, to the point where, freed from all knowledge, the torments of my head may disappear.

459.

O thou who hast been burned and burned again, and now deservest life anew! thou who art worthy only of adding fuel to the fire of h.e.l.l! how long wilt thou pray the Divinity to pardon Omar? What relation exists between thee and G.o.d? What audacity drives thee to ask Him to exercise His pity?

460.

As for me, without limpid wine I cannot live; my body is a burden which I cannot carry without drinking of the juice of the vine. Oh! might I be the slave of that delicious moment when the cupbearer said to me: Another cup! and that I had no longer strength to take it!

461.

There remains to me still a breath of life, thanks to the care of the cupbearer. But discord reigns still among men. I know that there only remains to me about a _men_ of wine from last evening, but I am ignorant of the s.p.a.ce of time that is still left me to live.

462.

Take a man who possesses bread sufficient to live upon for two days, who can draw a drop of fresh water into a cracked pitcher, why should such a man be commanded by another who is of no more worth, or why should he serve one who should be his equal?

463.

Since the day when Venus and the moon appeared in the sky, no one has seen anything here below preferable to ruby wine. I am truly astonished at the wine-merchants, for how can they buy anything superior to that which they sell?

464.

For those endowed with knowledge and virtue, who through their wisdom have become as torches to their disciples, even those have not progressed beyond this night profound. They have left some fables and returned to death's long sleep.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] About 1272 A.D.

[2] This t.i.tle is hard to determine without any acquaintance with the contents of the pamphlet.

[3] C.H.A. Bjerregaard in The Sufi Omar. J.F. Taylor & Co., N.Y., 1902.

[4] Some of Omar's Rubaiyat warn us of the danger of greatness, the instability of fortune, and while advocating charity to all men, recommending us to be too intimate with none. Attar makes Nizam ul Mulk use the very words of his friend Omar [Rub. xxviii.], When Nizam ul Mulk was in the Agony (of Death) he said, Oh G.o.d! I am pa.s.sing away in the hand of the Wind.

[5] Though all these, like our Smiths, Archers, Millers, Fletchers, etc., may simply regain the surname of an hereditary calling.

[6] _Philosophe Musulman qui a vecu en Odeur de Saintete dans sa Religion, vers la Fin du premier et le Commencement du second Siecle_, no part of which, except the _Philosophe_ can apply to our Khayyam.

[7] The Rashness of the Words, according to D'Herbelot, consisted in being so opposed to those in the Koran: No Man knows where he shall die.--This story of Omar reminds me of another so naturally--and when one remembers how wide of his humble mark the n.o.ble sailor aimed--so pathetically told by Captain Cook--not by Doctor Hawkesworth--in his Second Voyage (i. 374). When leaving Ulietea, Oreo's last request was for me to return. When he saw he could not obtain that promise, he asked the name of my _Marai_ (burying-place). As strange a question as this was, I hesitated not a moment to tell him Stepney; the parish in which I live when in London. I was made to repeat it several times over till they could p.r.o.nounce it; and then _Stepney Marai no Toote_ was echoed through an hundred mouths at once. I afterwards found the same question had been put to Mr. Forster by a man on sh.o.r.e; but he gave a different, and indeed more proper answer, by saying, No man who used the sea could say where he should be buried.

[8] Since this paper was written (adds the Reviewer in a note), we have met with a Copy of a very rare Edition, printed at Calcutta in 1836. This contains 438 Tetrastichs, with an Appendix containing 54 others not found in some MSS.

[9] Professor Cowell.

[10] This was written in 1868.

[11] Perhaps he would have edited the Poems himself some years ago. He may now as little approve of my version on one side, as of M. Nicolas'

theory on the other.

[12] A note to Quatrain 234 admits that, however clear the mystical meaning of such Images must be to Europeans, they are not quoted without _rougissant_ even by laymen in Persia--_Quant aux termes de tendresse qui commencent ce quatrain, comme tant d'autres dans ce recueil, nos lecteurs, habitues maintenant a l'etrangete des expressions si souvent employees par Kheyam pour rendre ses pensees sur l'amour divin, et a la singularite de ses images trop orientales, d'une sensualite quelquefois revoltante, n'auront pas de peine a se persuader qu'il s'agit de la Divinite, bien que cette conviction soit vivement discutee par les moullahs musulmans et meme par beaucoup de laques, qui rougissent veritablement d'une pareille licence de leur compatriote a l'egard des choses spirituelles._

[13] _Two Years' Travel in Persia_, etc., i. 165.

[14] The precise degree to which FitzGerald himself deemed it expedient to adhere to his original may be gathered by referring to quatrains of his which he has himself declared to be renderings of particular and isolated ruba'iyat.