Part 7 — EDWARD FITZGERALD

’TIS a dull sight To see the year dying, When winter winds Set the yellow wood sighing: Sighing, O sighing! When such a time cometh I do retire Into an old room Beside a bright fire: O, pile a bright fire! And there I sit Reading old things, Of knights and lorn damsels, While the wind sings— O, drearily sings! I never look out Nor attend to the blast; For all to be seen Is the leaves falling fast: Falling, falling! But close at the hearth, Like a cricket, sit I, Reading of summer And chivalry— Gallant chivalry! Then with an old friend I talk of our youth— How ’twas gladsome, but often Foolish, forsooth: But gladsome, gladsome! Or, to get merry, We sing some old rhyme That made the wood ring again In summer time— Sweet summer time! Then go we smoking, Silent and snug: Naught passes between us, Save a brown jug— Sometimes! And sometimes a tear Will rise in each eye, Seeing the two old friends So merrily— So merrily! And ere to bed Go we, go we, Down on the ashes We kneel on the knee, Praying together! Thus, then, live I Till, ’mid all the gloom, By Heaven! the bold sun Is with me in the room Shining, shining! Then the clouds part, Swallows soaring between; The spring is alive, And the meadows are green! I jump up like mad, Break the old pipe in twain, And away to the meadows, The meadows again!

A BOOK of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness— O. Wilderness were Paradise enow! Some for the Glories of This World; and some Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come; Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum! Look to the blowing Rose about us—‘Lo, Laughing,’ she says, ‘into the world I blow, At once the silken tassel of my Purse Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw.’ And those who husbanded the Golden grain And those who flung it to the winds like Rain Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn’d As, buried once, Men want dug up again.

THINK, in this batter’d Caravanserai Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day, How Sultán after Sultán with his Pomp Abode his destined Hour, and went his way. They say the Lion and the Lizard keep The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep: And Bahrám, that great Hunter—the wild Ass Stamps o’er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep. I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Cæsar bled; That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head. And this reviving Herb whose tender Green Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean— Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen! Ah, my Belovèd, fill the Cup that clears To-day of past Regrets and Future Fears: To-morrow!—Why, To-morrow I may be Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n thousand Years. For some we loved, the loveliest and the best That from his Vintage rolling Time hath prest, Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before, And one by one crept silently to rest. And we, that now make merry in the Room They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom, Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth Descend—ourselves to make a Couch—for whom? Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the Dust descend; Dust unto Dust, and under Dust to lie, Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and—sans End!

AH, with the Grape my fading Life provide, And wash my Body whence the Life has died, And lay me, shrouded in the living Leaf, By some not unfrequented Garden-side.... Yon rising Moon that looks for us again— How oft hereafter will she wax and wane; How oft hereafter rising look for us Through this same Garden—and for one in vain! And when like her, O Sákí, you shall pass Among the Guests star-scatter’d on the Grass, And in your joyous errand reach the spot Where I made One—turn down an empty Glass!