Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, and Salámán and Absál Together with a Life of Edward Fitzgerald and an Essay on Persian Poetry by Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Illustration:

    _"The Moon of Heav'n is rising once again:
      How oft hereafter rising shall she look
    Through this same Garden after me—in vain!"_]




    THE FITZGERALD CENTENARY EDITION


    Rubáiyát
    of
    Omar Khayyám

    AND

    Salámán and Absál


    RENDERED INTO ENGLISH VERSE
    BY
    EDWARD FITZGERALD


    TOGETHER WITH
    A LIFE OF EDWARD FITZGERALD
    AND AN
    ESSAY ON PERSIAN POETRY
    BY
    RALPH WALDO EMERSON


    PEACOCK, MANSFIELD & CO., LTD.
    PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

    MCMIX




    BOYLE, SON & WATCHURST,

    Printers, &c.
    Warwick Square, London, E.C.




    CONTENTS.

                                                                   PAGE

    TO E. FITZGERALD                                                 iv

    LIFE OF EDWARD FITZGERALD                                         1

    PREFACE TO RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM                              11

    RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM                                         21

    SALÁMÁN AND ABSÁL                                                43

    PERSIAN POETRY, AN ESSAY BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON                 101




    TO E. FITZGERALD.


    Old Fitz, who from your suburb grange
      Where once I tarried for a while,
    Glance at the wheeling Orb of change
      And greet it with a kindly smile;
    Whom yet I see, as there you sit
      Beneath your sheltering garden tree,
    And watch your doves about you flit
      And plant on shoulder, hand and knee,
    Or on your head their rosy feet,
      As if they knew your diet spares
    Whatever moved in that full sheet
      Let down to Peter at his prayers;

       *       *       *       *       *

                    But none can say
    That Lenten fare makes Lenten thought,
      Who reads your golden Eastern lay,
    Than which I know no version done
      In English more divinely well;
    A planet equal to the sun;
      Which cast it, that large infidel
    Your Omar: and your Omar drew
      Full-handed plaudits from our best
    In modern letters....


                  _Alfred, Lord Tennyson._




LIFE OF EDWARD FITZGERALD.


Edward FitzGerald was born in the year 1809, at Bredfield House, near
Woodbridge, Suffolk, being the third son of John Purcell, who,
subsequently to his marriage with a Miss FitzGerald, assumed the name
and arms proper to his wife's family.

St. Germain and Paris were in turn the home of his earlier years, but in
1821, he was sent to the Grammar School at Bury St. Edmunds. During his
stay in that ancient foundation he was the fellow pupil of James
Spedding and J. M. Kemble. From there he went in 1826 to Trinity
College, Cambridge, where he made the acquaintance of W. M. Thackeray
and others of only less note. His school and college friendships were
destined to prove lasting, as were, also, all those he was yet to form.

One of FitzGerald's chief characteristics was what might almost be
called a genius for friendship. He did not, indeed, wear his heart upon
his sleeve, but ties once formed were never unloosed by any failure in
charitable and tender affection on his part. Never, throughout a lengthy
life, did irritability and erratic petulance (displayed 'tis true, at
times by the translator of "that large infidel"), darken the eyes of
those he honoured with his friendship to the simple and whole-hearted
genuineness of the man.

From Oxford, FitzGerald retired to the 'suburb grange' at Woodbridge,
referred to by Tennyson. Here, narrowing his bodily wants to within the
limits of a Pythagorean fare, he led a life of a truly simple type
surrounded by books and roses, and, as ever, by a few firm friends.
Annual visits to London in the months of Spring kept alive the alliances
of earlier days, and secured for him yet other intimates, notably the
Tennyson brothers.

Amongst the languages, Spanish seems to have been his earlier love. His
translation of Calderon, due to obedience to the guiding impulse of
Professor Cowell, showed him to the world as a master of the rarest of
arts, that of conveying to an English audience the lights and shades of
a poem first fashioned in a foreign tongue.

At the bidding of the same mentor, he, later, turned his attention to
Persian, the first fruits of his toil being an anonymous version, in
Miltonic verse, of the 'Salámán and Absál' of Jámi. Soon after, the
treasure-house of the Bodleian library yielded up to him the pearl of
his literary endeavour, the verses of "Omar Khayyám," a pearl whose
dazzling charm previously had been revealed to but few, and that through
the medium of a version published in Paris by Monsieur Nicolas.

FitzGerald's hasty and ill-advised union with Lucy, daughter of Bernard
Barton, the Quaker poet and friend of Lamb, was but short-lived, and
demands no comment. They agreed to part.

In later life, most s