Quatrain

“ This quatrain is translated from O. 100:
In great desire I pressed my lips to the lip of the jar,
To enquire from it how long life might be attained;
It joined its lip to mine and whispered,
«Drink wine! for to this world thou returnest not.»
Ref.: O. 100, C. 283, L. 446, B. 442, P. 99, B. ii. 303, T. 185, P. v. 193.—W. 274, E.C. 25, V. 482.
C. 489 is a mystic and doctrinal quatrain containing the same injunction.
Drink wine! for I have told you a thousand times
There is no returning for you; when you are gone, you are gone! ”

“ This quatrain, interpolated after the quatrain which became No. XCVIII. in the fourth edition, was no doubt inspired by N. 457 (q.v. sub No. 98 ante) and by O. 54.
What the Pen has written never changes,
And grieving only results in deep affliction;
Even through all thy life thou weepest tears of blood,
Not one drop becomes increased beyond what it is.
Ref.: O. 54, B. ii. 144.
115
VARIATIONS
BETWEEN THE SECOND, THIRD AND FOURTH EDITIONS OF FITZGERALD'S TRANSLATION OF
OMAR KHAYYAM
STANZA
I. In ed. 2:
Wake! ”

“ Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away.
This quatrain owes its origin to three separate ruba'iyat, viz.: O. 135 (ll. 3 and 4) C. 500 (ll. 1 and 2) , C. 481 (ll. 3 and 4) .
Sit in the shade of the rose, for, by the wind, many roses
Have been scattered to earth and have become dust. ”

“ Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
This quatrain is translated from O. 94.
To speak plain language, and not in parables,
We are the pieces and heaven plays the game,
We are played together in a baby-game upon the chess-board of existence,
And one by one we return to the box of non-existence. ”

“ I quote the translation of this quatrain from Cunninghame-Graham. The third quatrain, here given as I find it in Os Sertões, 1914, fifth edition, differs in a single unimportant spelling from that used by the author of A Brazilian Mystic, who translates it: “Our King, Dom Sebastian, will come to visit us and free us from the reign of the dog.” ”

“ A lady who has collated all the MSS. of Omar in Europe tells me she has found in one place and another no less than 1200 quatrains attributed to him. She has, however, in an article in Frazer for May 1879, expressed the opinion that the number of genuine quatrains is not more than 250 or 300, and I am inclined to think this estimate high enough. But when one comes to consider which particular quatrains are to be pronounced genuine, and which imitations, it is not always easy to form a confident decision. ”

“ In the first draught of the Third Edition, there stood the following quatrain, later deleted:
Better, oh, better, cancel from the Scroll
Of Universe one luckless Human Soul,
Than drop by drop enlarge the Flood that rolls
Hoarser with Anguish as the Ages Roll.
Transcriber's Notes: 1. A Table of Contents has been created for this e-text where none existed in the original work.
2. Because the nature of this work is to present and compare the several translations, no spelling or end of sentence punctuation corrections have been made in the Quatrains. ”

“ Schoolboys of the present day often chant a quatrain without a suspicion that young scholars vented their discontent in the same doggerel in the days when the invincible Armada was approaching our shores. ”

“ This quatrain is inspired by C. 431.
Every day I resolve to repent in the evening,
Making repentance of the brimful goblet and cup;
Now that the season of roses [89] has come, I cannot grieve
Give penitence for repentance in the season of roses, O Lord!
Ref.: C. 431, L. 655, B. 647 B. ii. 510.—W. 425, V. 704.
XCV.
And much as Wine has play'd the Infidel,
And robb'd me of my Robe of Honour—Well,
I wonder often what the Vintners buy
One half so precious as the stuff they sell.
103
The original of this quatrain is O. 62. ”

“ The happiness and misery that are predestined for us,
Do not impute them to the heavens, for, in the way of Wisdom,
Those heavens are a thousandfold more helpless than thou art.
Ref.: O. 41, C. 62, L. 80, B. 76, S.P. 95, P. 45.—W. 96, N. 95, V. 79.
LXXIII.
With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man knead,
And there of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed:
And the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.
In this quatrain we trace the influence of O. 31 (quoted in the parallel to quatrain No. 71, ante) and of O. 95.
90
Oh, heart! ”

“ No sailor could have composed it unless he was also a scholar and a poet. But it is art that conceals art. “Taking Stevenson’s quatrain as a starting-point, Allison succeeded in writing a wholly modern versification in words and meter so skilfully used as to create not only a vivid atmosphere of piracy and antiquity, but of unskilfulness and coarseness.” ”

“ It has, naturally, been difficult at times to decide whether certain stanzas should be counted as couplets, or as quatrains half as long. In such cases, the air, or tune, and other data, often rather subtle, have been employed in making decisions. The quatrain form has in uncertain instances been given the benefit of the doubt. Even thus, certain minor inconsistencies will perhaps be noted. It is hardly necessary to add that assonance freely occurs in the place of rime, and as such it is considered throughout. ”

“ In similar fashion he varies the rhymes, passing as the subject or the accompaniment of the word-music may require, from the couplet to the quatrain, and from the quatrain to the irregularly rhymed 'Pindaric'; always, however, taking care that, except in the set lyric, the quatrain shall not fall too much into definite stanza, but be interlaced in sense or sound sufficiently to carry on the narrative. The result, to some tastes, is a medium quite unsurpassed for the particular purpose. ”

“ As regards metre, there is no doubt that the quatrain of ten-syllable lines which has been tried by Hammer, Bicknell, and others, and has been raised by Mr. Fitzgerald almost to the rank of a recognised English metre, is the best representative of the Rubá'í. It fairly satisfies Conington's canon, viz. that there ought to be some degree of metrical conformity between the measure of the original and the translation, for though it does not exactly correspond with the Rubá'í, it very clearly suggests it. ”

“ T.—The MS. in the Library of the Nawab of Tonk. Apparently copied about a.d. 1840 principally from C., containing 369 ruba'iyat.
E.C.—The quatrains translated by Prof. E.B. Cowell in his article in the «Calcutta Review,» No. 59, March, 1858, p. 149.
De T.—The ten quatrains translated from the Ouseley MS. by Garcin de Tassy in his «Note sur les Ruba'iyat d'Omar Khaïyām.» (Paris, Imprimerie Impériale, 1857.)
V.—The metrical translation by John Payne, published by the Villon Society (London, 1898) , containing 845 quatrains.
44
ANALYSIS OF
EDWARD FITZGERALD'S QUATRAINS I.
Wake! ”

“ Mankind are fallen from vain imagining into pride,
And are consumed in the search after houris and palaces. [37]
Ref.: C. 225, L. 279, B. 275, S.P. 167, T. 163.—W. 184, N. 167, V. 283.
55
O. 40 may also be cited for the closeness of its parallel both to this, and to the preceding quatrain:
I know not whether he who fashioned me
Appointed me to dwell in heaven or in dreadful hell,
(But) some food, and an adored one, and wine [38] upon the green bank of a field—
All these three are present cash to me: thine be the promised heaven!
Ref.: O. 40, L. 89, B. 85, C. 107, S.P. 92, T. 84, P. v. ”

“ This quatrain is quoted by many of the Biographers of Abu'l-Ala to prove that he is a materialist. Which argument is easily refuted, however, with others quatrains taken at random from the Luzumiyat.
LVII, LVIII and LIX
Omar was also a confessed cynical-hypocrite. Thus runs the first line of the 114th quatrain of Heron-Allen's:
"The world being fleeting I practise naught but
artifice."
And he also chafes in the chains of his sins. Following is the 23d quatrain of the same translation:
"Khayyam, why mourn for thy sins? ”

“ L. N. A. I. This quatrain is also ascribed to the celebrated philosopher Avicenna. See No. 406.
421.
This is the form Thou gavest me of old,
Wherein Thou workest marvels manifold;
Can I aspire to be a better man,
Or other than I issued from Thy mould?
421. C. L. N. A. I. This is a variation of No. 221. ”

“ No one can pass behind the Curtain of Fate
No one is master of the Secret of Destiny.
Ref.: C. 193, L. 345, B. 341, S.P. 177, B. ii. 212.—W 192, N. 177, V. 346.
XXXIII.*
Earth could not answer; nor the seas that mourn
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.
This is the quatrain (not No. 31 as stated by Mr. Aldis Wright in his Editorial Note) taken by Edward FitzGerald from the Mantik ut-tair of Ferid ud din Attar. The story which inspired it begins at distich No. ”

“ C. reads for «food» and «wine,» «goblet» and «lute,» whence we get «thou beside me singing in the wilderness.»
[39] These two lines refer to the practice in the East of burying treasure to hide it when a night attack (line 1) of dacoits or robbers is anticipated.
[40] See FitzGerald's note upon this hero, and the following quatrain.
[41] Moles or «beauty spots» are very highly esteemed in the East.
[42] i.e., If life were eternal, you could not take the place of others who have died before you. L. 2, lit.: «let the world pass, etc.»
[43] i.e., the Mystic Road or Way of Salvation. ”

“ The state of the case is this:—Out of all the quatrains passing under Omar's name hardly any stand alone. Almost every one belongs to a family, more or less numerous, to the other members of which it bears a strong family likeness. One can say with some confidence that all these replicas, paraprases and variations of the same ideas can hardly be the work of one and the same hand; but to distinguish with certainty the handiwork of the master from that of his imitators is a task probably beyond the powers of any foreign critic living 800 years after the poems in question were written. ”

“ Beyond the train we see the lines like curves of blue riband on the yellow and white quartz ballast of the track. Our [Pg 159] little engine puffs up little rags of white against the blue sky. Add a touch of bright colour, a flutter of pink drapery, and a brown shoulder, a finely modelled arm and bangle at a carriage window, catching the cool draught, and you have, I think, quite a pleasant colour scheme. The track is so tidy that there are white quartz stones arranged along each side of the yellow quartz ballast, and where there is sand ballast it is patted down as neatly as a pie crust. ”

“ It would take thousands of hearts to light one electric light, hundreds of thousands to run one trolley car. Yet just that slight little current from the heart is enough to sway a gossamer strand of quartz fibre in what I may call my 'heart station' here. This current, as I have told you, passes from each of you over a wire and vibrates a fine quartz fibre in unison with it, one of the most delicate bits of mechanism ever made, recording the result on a photographic film by means of a beam of light reflected from a delicate mirror. ”

“ So terrific was the roar of my new engine that I could only communicate with Roseye by signs.
I pointed at the moving train and, understanding my gesture, she nodded.
As we rose higher and yet higher into the calm starlit sky, the earth beneath us became increasingly mysterious and misty. Here and there dim lights showed, single lights of scattered cottages unseen by rural constables, or improperly obscured lights from the larger houses.
Soon some red and green lights showed away on our left, and I knew that in the valley there ran the main railway line to London. ”

“ I knew it to be from a railway engine, the stoker of which had been firing up. Moving trains, notwithstanding the pulling down of carriage-blinds, and the darkening of railway platforms so that persons break their legs in descending, or getting out at a supposed platform and falling upon the line, form the best guides for aircraft at night. By following an express locomotive, which must be stoked at frequent intervals, and looking out for the coloured signal-lights along the line, an airman can always reach the London area. ”

“ Quarter-rails, are narrow-moulded planks, generally of fir, reaching from the top of the stern to the gangway. They are supported by stanchions, and serve as a fence to the quarter-deck, to prevent the men from tumbling into the sea by the rolling of the ship, particularly in small vessels.
QUARTERS, a name given, at sea, to the several stations where the officers and crew of a ship of war are posted in action. See the article Engagement.
The number of men appointed to manage the artillery is always in proportion to the nature of the guns, and the number and condition of the ship’s crew. ”

“ The handling of a ship in bad weather, or in crowded channels, or a strong tideway, or in going alongside a quay or other ship—all this practice makes a sailor of the man, makes him do the one and only right thing at the right second. But it needed ‘something plus’ in the Q-ship service. For six months, for a year, she might have wandered up and down the Atlantic, all over the submarine zone, with never a sight of the enemy, and then, all of a sudden, a torpedo is seen rushing straight for the ship. ”

“ If a freight train, or even a passenger train, had been coming up behind them, he could have heard it in time. But as it happened, a light engine, which made no noise at all, was coming,—ordered out to help with the freight that was piling up at the other end of the division. This engine got no warning, came round the curve, struck the caboose, went straight through it, and crashed into the heavy lumber car ahead. ”