Search This Blog

Omar Khayyám



  • A hair divides what is false and true.



  • Tomorrow! - why, tomorrow I may be myself with yesterday's seven thousand years.



  • Ah Love! Could you and I with him conspire to grasp this sorry scheme of things entire would we not shatter it to bite - and then re - mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire?



  • Dust into dust, and under dust, to lie, sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and - sans end.



  • A book of Verses underneath the bough, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread - and thou beside me singing in the wilderness -Oh, wilderness were paradise enough! 



  • And that inverted bow They call the sky, whereunder crawling cooped we live and die, lift not your hands to it for help - for it as impotently moves as you or I.



  • Oh thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin beset the road I was to wander in, thou wilt not with predestined evil round enmesh, and then impute my fall to sin.



  • Strange - is it not? - that of the myriads who before us passed the door of Darkness through, not one returns to tell us of the road which to discover we must travel too.



  • I sent my soul through the invisible, some letter of that after - life to spell, and by and by my soul returned ''I myself am Heaven and Hell.''



  • Drink! For you know not whence you came, nor why: drink! For you know not why you go, nor where.



  • 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.



  • And this I know, whether the one true light kindle to Love, or Wrath consume me quite, one flash of it within the tavern caught better than in the temple lost outright.



  • There was the door to which I found no key, There was the veil through which I might not see.



  • Ah, take the cash, and let the credit go, nor heed the rumble of a distant drum!



  • Heaven but the vision of fulfilled desire, and Hell the shadow from a soul on fire.



  • All this of pot and potter - tell me then, who is the potter, pray, and who the pot?



  • The bird of time has but a little way to flutter - and the bird is on the wing.



  • I sometimes think that never blows so red the rose as where some buried Caesar bled; that every hyacinth the garden wears dropt in her lap from some once lovely head.



  • You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse I made a second marriage in my house; divorced old barren reason from my bed, and took the daughter of the vine to spouse.



  • One thing is certain and the rest is lies; the flower that once has blown for ever dies.



  • 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 where in I went.



  • The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires.



No comments:

Post a Comment