THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM 1
by Edward FitzGerald

11
With me along some Strip of Herbage strown

That just divides the desert from the sown,

Where name of slave and Sultan scarce is known,

And pity Mahmud on his golden Throne.

12
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,

A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse — and Thou

Beside me singing in the wilderness

 And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
13
“How sweet is mortal Sovranty!” – think some:

Others – “How blest the Paradise to come!

” Ah, take the Cash and let the Credit go

Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
14
Were it not Folly, Spider-like to spin
The Thread of present Life away to win
What? For ourselves who know not if we shall
Breathe out the very Breath we now breathe in! 
15
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.”
16
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon

Turns Ashes – or it prospers; and anon,

Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face

Lighting a little Hour or two – is gone.
17
And those who husbanded the Golden Grain,

And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain,

Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn’d

As, buried once, Men want dug up again.
18
Think, in this batter’d Caravanserai

Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day,

How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp

Abode his Hour or two, and went his way.
19
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep

The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep;

And Bahram, that great Hunter – the Wild Ass

Stamps o’er his head, but cannot break his Sleep.
20
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.