The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Salaam Folks,

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is one of the best known and most often quoted pieces of English writing. [Most of them are sceptical and hedonistic (devoted to pursuit of pleasure and self-gratification) in nature] While it has nothing to do with your CAT/CET preparation, I still thought a few quatrains from The Rubaiyat could not possibly hurt. So here goes,

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

-x-

There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see:
Some little talk awhile of ME and Thee
There was - and then no more of THEE and ME.

-x-

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness-
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

-x-

Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close!
The Nightingale that in the branches sang,
Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows!


Till I get back with some more Rubaiyats,

Khuda Hafeez