Omar
Khayyam (1050?-1122), Persian mathematician,
astronomer, and author of one of the world's best-known works of poetry.
He was born in the city of Nishapur, Persia now known as Iran. He was a
great scholar and astronomer of his time and worked for the King. He helped
in reforming the calendar, and he was one of the most notable mathematicians
of his time.
Omar is famous as
a poet and the author of the Rubáiyát. About 1000 of these
epigrammatic four-line stanzas, which reflect upon nature and humanity. |
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Selection from Omar Khayyam's Rubáiyát
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend.
’Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and
Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates and
slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
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.
And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop’t we live and
die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help—for
It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.
Continued on pages 2 to 5
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