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A One-Hit Wonder
Jan. 13th, 2025 09:33 am I walk out into the garden to feed the birds at sunrise. The sky is still grey, the world is still grey, but next door's chimney stack is gleaming a rosy pink- where the slanted ray of the still invisible sun has struck it.
And I call to mind the first stanza of Edward Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayham.
Awake, for morning in the bowl of night
Has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight,
And lo, the hunter of the east has caught
the sultan's turret in a noose of light
See, I know it by heart. There was a time when every mildly literate British person knew it by heart. I doubt that this is the case any longer. In fact I'm sure it isn't.
But "noose of light" is good, isn't it. And the Rubaiyat is full of such felicities.
Edward Fitzgerald was, by his own admission an idle fellow who liked messing about in boats. He had private means and high-profile literary friends- most notably Alfred Tennyson. He published numerous translations and critical studies, but the Rubaiyat is the only thing of his that anyone still reads.....
And I call to mind the first stanza of Edward Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayham.
Awake, for morning in the bowl of night
Has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight,
And lo, the hunter of the east has caught
the sultan's turret in a noose of light
See, I know it by heart. There was a time when every mildly literate British person knew it by heart. I doubt that this is the case any longer. In fact I'm sure it isn't.
But "noose of light" is good, isn't it. And the Rubaiyat is full of such felicities.
Edward Fitzgerald was, by his own admission an idle fellow who liked messing about in boats. He had private means and high-profile literary friends- most notably Alfred Tennyson. He published numerous translations and critical studies, but the Rubaiyat is the only thing of his that anyone still reads.....
