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Thereafter turning his attention to Persian, he produced , anonymously, his famous translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám. He also pub. translations of the Agamemnon of Æschylus, and the Oedipus Tyrannus and Oedipus Coloneus of Sophocles.
There was a delirious sort of Eastern feeling about it a kind of combination of "The Thousand and One Nights" and the "Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyam." The Abbey tower for once seemed out of place, and ought to have changed miraculously into a pagoda or a minaret.
To buy other things with flowers were not so incongruous. I have often thought of trying my tobacconist with a tulip; and certainly an orchid no very rare one either should cover one's household expenses for a week, if not a fortnight. Omar Khayyám used to wonder what the vintners buy 'one-half so precious as the stuff they sell. It is surely natural to wonder in like manner of the poet.
I am not collecting copies of the cheaper editions of Omar Khayyam. I gave the last four that I received to the lift-boy, and I like to think of him reading them, with FitzGerald's notes, to his aged mother. Lift-boys always have aged mothers; shows such nice feeling on their part, I think. Personally, I can't see where the difficulty in choosing suitable presents lies.
He coughed a little, and made us a speech. I forget his words, but remember the gist of them. He was pleased to welcome us within his army, and trusted to our honor and loyalty. He made an allusion to the power of the press, and promised us facilities for seeing and writing, within the bounds of censorship. I noticed that he pronounced St.-Omer, St.-Omar, as though Omar Khayyam had been canonized.
With which reflection Desmond sat down finally in the sanctuary of his study; lit a cheroot; and opened a battered original of Omar Khayyam, whose stately quatrains and exquisite imagery were less hackneyed then, than they have since become among modern devotees of culture. A great silence pervaded the house.
He seemed to think that his speech would settle everything completely. I wandered round the room waiting for Jack to bring forward his scheme if he could remember it, but he was sitting on the table sucking at a pipe which had no tobacco in it, so I drifted over to a book-case, and nearly the first book I saw was an edition of Omar Khayyam.
Wilcox is all right," cut in the lady, with a hint of asperity. "And so are Tolstoi, and Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, and Omar Khayyam, and Mr. Edward Bok. I've read 'em all. I would like to discuss with you the divine right of the soul as opposed to the freedom-destroying restrictions of a bigoted and narrow-minded society. But I will proceed to business.
There was one evening when he came to a dead stop in his walk and his talk, and shaking a dramatic finger at us all, said: "I tell you what it is. I am not Vedder. I am Omar Khayyam!" "No," drawled the voice of a disgusted artist who had not got a word in for more than an hour, "No, you're not. You're the Great I Am!" Vedder laughed with the rest of us, but I am not sure he liked it.
When Omar Khayyam says: 'A book of verse beneath the bough A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou Sitting beside me in the wilderness O wilderness were Paradise enow. It is clear that he speaks fully as much ascetically as he does æsthetically. He makes a list of things and says that he wants no more. The same thing was done by a mediæval monk.
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