The Rubaiyat
By Omar Khayyam
VII
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.
XII
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
XXIV
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!
LIV
Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit
Of This and That endeavour and dispute;
Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.
LXVII
Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire,
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.
LXVI
I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answer'd "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell:"
LXVIII
We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show;
LXXI
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
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.
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.
XCIX
Ah, Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!
Stanza VII Paraphrase: Live life to the fullest while
you have it. Enjoy what you have now. Life is short,
and time is passing quickly.
Stanza XII Paraphrase: Not much is needed to be
truly happy! Some poetry, food, wine, and a
companion is all that is required. Enjoy the simple
things and be happy!
Stanza XXIV Paraphrase: Make the most of the
time we have in this life. Soon enough, we will die,
and there will be no more wine or song.
Stanza LIV Paraphrase: Don’t waste your time
pursuing things that do not matter at the expense of
living life! Better to live now, than to later regret not
living because you spent all of your time pursuing
things that do not matter.
Stanza LXVII Paraphrase: Heaven is a wishful
reflection of good things that we have experienced
here on earth; hell a vision based on earthly
suffering.
Stanza LXVI Paraphrase: Fasting over, it is time to
celebrate, and the Porter is approaching – the
Porter’s Shoulder-knot was a leather pad worn on
the porter’s shoulder to prevent the strap, from
which hung heavy jars of wine, from digging into his
shoulder. As the Porter walked and the jars swung
about, the strap would ‘creak’ as it rubbed against
the leather of the shoulder-knot.
Stanza LXVIII Paraphrase: We think that we are in
control of our lives, but forces of which we are
unaware are in control.
Stanza LXXI Paraphrase: Fate writes the story of
our lives, and once written, nothing that we can do
will change what has happened.
Stanza LXXIII Paraphrase: With the Earth’s first
Clay, from which God created the first man, Adam,
God also the clay for the Last Man. The second line
likens God’s creation of Man to planting a crop: the
Harvest at the End of the World is predetermined by
the Seed which God planted at the Beginning. The
last two lines neatly contrast WRITE at the Creation,
with READ at the End (Last Dawn of Reckoning.)
Stanza XCIX Paraphrase: Then again we've had a
century of people shattering 'schemes of things
entire' and we know with hindsight how badly they
always turn out.
 Omar Khayyam

1048-1131

Omar Khayyam's full name was Ghiyath al-Din Abu'l-Fath Umar ibn Ibrahim Al-Nisaburi al-Khayyami.
Khayyam studied philosophy at Naishapur. He lived in a time that did not make life easy for learned
men unless they had the support of a ruler at one of the many courts. However Khayyam was an
outstanding mathematician and astronomer and he did write several works including Problems of
Arithmetic, a book on music, and one on algebra before he was 25 years old.

In the latter, Khayyam considered the problem of finding a right triangle having the property that the
hypotenuse equals the sum of one leg plus the altitude on the hypotenuse. This problem led Khayyam
to solve the cubic equation x3 + 200x = 20x2 + 2000 and he found a positive root of this cubic by
considering the intersection of a rectangular hyperbola and a circle. An approximate numerical solution
was then found by interpolation in trigonometric tables. Perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that
Khayyam states that the solution of this cubic requires the use of conic sections and that it cannot be
solved by ruler and compass methods, a result which would not be proved for another 750 years.

In 1070 he moved to Samarkand in Uzbekistan, one of the oldest cities of Central Asia. There
Khayyam was supported by a prominent jurist of Samarkand, and this allowed him to write his most
famous algebra work, Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra. This contained a complete
classification of cubic equations with geometric solutions found by means of intersecting conic
sections. In fact, Khayyam gives an interesting historical account in which he claims the contributions
by earlier writers such as Al-Mahani and Al-Khazin were to translate geometric problems of the Greeks
into algebraic equations, something which was essentially impossible before the work of Al-Khwarizmi.
However, Khayyam himself seems to have been the first to conceive a general theory of cubic
equations. Another achievement in the algebra text is Khayyam's realisation that a cubic equation can
have more than one solution. He demonstrated the existence of equations having two solutions, but
unfortunately he does not appear to have found that a cubic can have three solutions.

Also in his algebra book, Khayyam refers to another work of his which is now lost. In the lost work,
Khayyam discusses the Pascal triangle but he was not the first to do so since al-Karaji discussed the
Pascal triangle before this date. In fact we can be fairly sure that Khayyam used a method of finding
nth roots based on the binomial expansion, and therefore on the binomial coefficients.

In another book, Khayyam made a contribution to non-euclidean geometry, although this was not his
intention. In trying to prove the parallels postulate he accidentally proved properties of figures in non-
euclidean geometries. Khayyam also gave important results on ratios in this book, extending Euclid's
work to include the multiplication of ratios.

A powerful sultan then invited Khayyam to go to Esfahan to set up an Observatory there. Other
leading astronomers were also brought to the Observatory in Esfahan and for 18 years Khayyam led
the scientists and produced work of outstanding quality. It was a period of peace during which the
political situation allowed Khayyam the opportunity to devote himself entirely to his scholarly work.
During this time, Khayyam led work on compiling astronomical tables and he also contributed to
calendar reform in 1079. Khayyam measured the length of the year as 365.24219858156 days. This
shows an incredible confidence to attempt to give the result to this degree of accuracy, and it is
amazingly accurate. We know now that the length of the year is changing in the sixth decimal place
over a person's lifetime. The length of the year in 1900 was 365.242196 days, while in 2000 it was
365.242190 days.

In 1092 political events ended Khayyam's period of peaceful existence. Funding to run the
Observatory ceased and Khayyam's calendar reform was put on hold. Khayyam also came under
attack from the orthodox Muslims who felt that Khayyam's questioning mind did not conform to the
faith. Despite being out of favour on all sides, Khayyam remained at the Court and tried to regain
favour. He wrote a work in which he described former rulers in Iran as men of great honour who had
supported public works, science and scholarship. Another empire rose in 1118, this time with Merv,
Turkmenistan as its capital. The shah created a great center of Islamic learning in Merv where
Khayyam wrote further works on mathematics.

Edward Fitzgerald
Edward Fitzgerald was born near Woodbridge, Suffolk. He was one of eight children and his
parents owned a number of estates in England and Ireland. He was educated at the King Edward VI
Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge.

He spent most of his life in Suffolk where he lived the life of a country gentleman rarely travelling,
except to London. He lived for sixteen years on his family estate at Boulge and spent the remainder
of his life in Woodbridge.

In 1850 he married the daughter of the poet Bernard Barton whose biography he had penned
previously. The marriage appears to have been an unhappy one and they separated after only a few
months. After learning Spanish privately he produced blank-verse translations of six poems by
Calderon (1853). His developing fascination with Persian poetry led him to translate a series of
works. Salaman and Absal, an allegory by Kami was published anonymously in 1856 followed in
1859 by his most celebrated work, translations from the Rubaiyat.

His warm personality and sophisticated wit earned him the friendship of many great writers including
William Thackery, Alfred Tennyson and Thomas Carlyle. Tennyson was to dedicate his poem
'Tiresias' to Fitzgerald. He left a legacy of delightful letters, bursting with anecdotes concerning his
literary acquaintances, which were edited and published after his death.

Carpe Diem- Carpe is the second-person singular present active imperative of carpō "pick or pluck"
used by Horace to mean "enjoy, seize, make use of".Diem is the accusative of dies "day". A more
literal translation of carpe diem would thus be "pluck the day [as it is ripe]"—that is, enjoy the
moment. In Horace, the phrase is part of the longer carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero,
which can be translated as "Seize the day, put very little trust in tomorrow (the future)". The ode says
that the future is unforeseen and that one should not leave to chance future happenings, but rather
one should do all one can today to make one's future better. This phrase is usually understood against
Horace's Epicurean background. The meaning of carpe diem as used by Horace is not to ignore the
future, but rather not to trust that everything is going to fall into place for you and taking action for
the future today.

Hedonism- is a school of thought that argues that the pursuit of pleasure and intrinsic goods are the
primary or most important goals of human life. A hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure (pleasure
minus pain). However upon finally gaining said pleasure, happiness may remain stationary.

Predestination- in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with
reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. Explanations of predestination often seek to
address the "paradox of free will", whereby God's omniscience seems incompatible with human free
will.