The Moving Finger Writes, And Having Writ, Moves On

During his lifetime, Omar Khayyam (circa 1048-1143) was best known as a mathematician, but now he is mostly known for his work of philosophical and metaphysical poetry, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. He wrote thousands of quatrains in his lifetime, but the ones we are most familiar with are those translated by Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883). There is some question as to whether some of the quatrains are more Fitzgerald than Khayyam, but either way these quatrains are still immortal.

Here are some of my favorites.

Quattrain 71:

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.

Quattrain 12:

Here with a little bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, A Book of Verse--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

Quattrain 32:

Into this Universe and Why not knowing
Nor whence, like Water, willy-nilly flowing;
And out of it, as wind along the Waste,
I know not whither, willy-nilly flowing.

Quattrain 54:

Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit
Of This and That endeavor and dispute;
Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.

Quattrain #67

Heaven but the Vision of fulfilled Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire,
Cast in the Darkness into which ourselves,
So late emerged from shall so soon expire.

Quattrain #88

Oh, Thou, who Men of baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin the Face of Wretched Man
Is black with-Man's forgiveness give--and take!

Quattrain #95

And much as Wine has played the Infidel,
And robbed me of my Robe of Honor--Well,
I often wonder what the Vintner's buy
One half so precious as the wares they sell.