Restless
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultán’s Turret in a Noose of Light.
Dreaming when Dawn’s Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,
‘Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life’s Liquor in its Cup be dry.’
And, as the Cock crew, those who sat before
The Tavern shouted – ‘Open then the Door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more.’
Edward Fitzgerald
Edward Fitzgerald (1809-83) published this free translation of the mediaeval Arabic poem known as The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in 1859. In this version it became celebrated within Victorian culture. Its musings on life and its purposes are energised by a sense of the proximity of death and the need to seize life’s fullness in the face of the inscrutable impersonality of the universe.
