5 best mystical Rubaiyat [couplets] of Omar Khayyam on Life, Drinking, Wisdom and Today

 

On ‘Drinking’ with ‘Friend’

I fell asleep, and Wisdom said to me:

‘Sleeping, the rose of happiness never bloomed.

Why do you do a thing which is next to death?

Drink “wine”, for you will have long to sleep.

 

Friends, when you hold a meeting

You must much remember the ‘Friend’.

When you drink successfully together,

When my turn comes, ‘turn the glass upside down.

 

Those who have gone before us, O Cupbearer,

Are sleeping in the dust of self-pride.

Go, drink ‘wine’, and hear from me the Truth

What they have only said is in our hands, O’Cupbearer.

 

 

 

On Limitations of this Life

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky

Where under crawling confinement we live and die

 Lift not your hands to It for help—for It

As weakly moves as you or I.

 

 

On Wisdom

 

With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow

And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow

And this was all the Harvest that I reaped

 

“I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”

 

 

On Kings and their gone Glory

They say the Lion and the Lizard keep

The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep

And Bahrim, that great Hunter

The Wild Ass Stamps over his Head, but cannot break his Sleep

 

 

On Today

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend

Before we too into the Dust descend;

Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie

No Wine, no Song, no Singer, and no End