Quatrain no. 24 in the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
XXV.
Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss’d
Of the Two Worlds so learnedly, are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
Are scatter’d, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.
A. J. Arberry identifies the original Persian stanza on which he says this poem is based as no 140 in the Bodleian manuscript (139 in my translation).
آنان که ز پیش رفته‌اند ای ساقی
در خاکِ غرور خفته‌اند ای ساقی
رو باده خور و حقیقت از من بشنو
باد است هر آنچه گفته‌اند ای ساقی
He also thought it underlay No. 1:3, as I discussed under that heading.
While this Persian stanza does speak of the people who went before as lying in the “dust of vanity,” it doesn’t mention sages, and so I think some other quatrain must have nuanced FitzGerald’s rendering, even if Bodleian 140 is the main basis for it.
Edward Heron-Allen (pp. 43-45) suggested that the quatrain may also have been influenced by no. 236 in the Calcutta manuscript, also found here.
آنها که خلاصهٔ جهان ایشانند
بر اوج فلک براق فکرت رانند
در معرفت ذات تو مانند فلک
سرگشته و سرنگون و سرگردانند
I would translate this one in blank verse this way:
The ones who are the essence of the world
Direct the steed of thought up to the sky.
But in knowing your essence, like that sky,
They are bewildered, spinning, upside-down.
The “steed” here, by the way, is buraq, the mythical donkey with angelic wings that Muslim legend held bore the Prophet Muhammad up to heaven. The poem is contrasting the philosophers, whose deep thoughts could not provide them insights into the divine essence, to the Prophet Muhammad, who received revelation.
Although this verse does refer to the sages, the elite of the world, it is pious in its conclusion that God is unknowable and doesn’t have the same tone of cynicism as the FitzGerald stanza. It is one of many poems later ascribed to Khayyam, some of them with a flavor of Sufi mysticism.
Alexander questions the philosopher, physician and the goblet, ca. 1610, India; Alexander sits in a plane tree as though in a throne, wearing a Greek helmet engraved with the image of a horse. A falcon as an emblem of his kingly status perches on his gloved right hand. Seated before him is a learned man presenting him with a book, and Alexander appears to be questioning him, as is described in a passage from the Eskandar-nameh section of the Khamseh. Nezami’s Khamseh was popular in the Mughal court of India. San Diego Museum of Art . Public Domain.
I suspect that the last two lines of no. 112 in the Bodleian manuscript, which is 111 in my translation, may have had an influence here. It is also here.
چون نیست مقام ما در این دير مقیم
پس بی می و معشوق خطائیست عظیم
تا کی ز قدیم و محدث امیدم و بیم
چون من رفتم جهان چه محدث چه قدیم
I translated them in free verse:
“How long will sages debate if this world is eternal or created?
Once I have left it, why should I care, either way?”
These lines point to the inevitability of death and to the irrelevance of the metaphysical debates of sages and saints.
—-
Order Juan Cole’s contemporary poetic translation of the Rubáiyát from
or Barnes and Noble.
or for $16 at Amazon Kindle
——-
The ancient Greeks and their Muslim followers like Avicenna (Ibn Sina) held that the world is eternal. Muslim thinkers less influenced by Hellenistic thought insisted that the world was created at a particular point in time and so is not eternal, but that God is eternal. The Greek-influenced philosophers held that the world is also eternal, but that it might or might not have existed, and so is contingent. God’s being, however, is necessary and so is a different sort of being that must exist. So the world’s being is different from God’s, even though both have always existed. The philosophers pointed out that God is the Creator, so he must always have had a creation. The more literalist Muslim thinkers branded this theology a heresy.
If your eyes have glazed over, you are feeling some of the impatience of the Omarian poetry with these metaphysical issues that is apparent both in FitzGerald’s rendering and in the Persian originals.
—-
For more commentaries on FitzGerald’s translations of the Rubáiyát, see
FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: Commentary by Juan Cole with Original Persian
© 2025 All Rights Reserved