Quatrain 1

دوری که در آن آمدن و رفتن ماست

آن را نه بدايت نه نهايت پيداست

کس می نزند* دمی در اين معنی راست

کاين آمدن از کجا و رفتن به کجاست

source, دمی با خيام /Dami baa khayyam, Ali Dashti, 5th ed., quatrain 1, p. 244 [hereafter, "Dashti"]

dowri ke dar aan aamadan o raftan-e maast

aan raa na bedaayat na nehaayat peydaast

kas mi nazanad dami dar in ma'ni raast

kin aamadan az kojaa o raftan be kojaast

We come and we go, this cycle keeps spinning,

no start no finish is found within it.

 Not a whimper is heard on what matters most,

where coming comes from, where going finds ending.

The sphere upon which mortals come and go,

Has no end nor beginning that we know;

And none there is to tell us in plain truth:

Whence do we come and whither do we go.

Ahmad Saidi, quatrain 75

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain: 1. The circle in which is that coming and going of ours 2. Of it neither beginning nor ending is/has been found - for aan raa, see W.M. Thackston, An Introduction to Persian, 3rd ed. revised, Iranbooks, Inc., 1993, 197-198 and Gernot L. Windfuhr, Persian Grammar: History and State of its Study, Mouton, The Hague, 1979, 49. Both note this classical usage for the -raa "dative" marker.  The term "dative" --  the word is the Latin translation of the Greek dotikê, "giving"; in Latin grammar the "dative(case)" denotes a noun/pronoun construction or "case" of reference -- reference to whom or to what the idea of the main verb relates. Here the reference has a possessive flavor: neither its beginning nor its ending has been discovered. Windfuhr cites 'a famous example': mard-i-raa do pesar budand - 'a man had two sons' 3. No one speaks on this issue rightly -- here dami zadan = sohbat kardan; Dashti has می نزند in his first edition and in this 5th edition as well on page 137, but here he has می زند ; this is likely a typographical error since می زند doesn't work metrically 4. Saying/Explaining where this coming is from and where the going is to -- here the function of ke (+-in) is to pose a question, as above, 'saying...'

Comments on Quatrain 1 et al.

The viewer will find the works cited below in the sidebar under Bibliography.

Dashti groups Quatrain 1  along with  6 other quatrains  in his  final selection of  75 quatrains which he attributes to Khayyam, under the title, جهان هستی ؟/The World of Existence?  Sadeq Hedayat groups this quatrain (10) with nine others under the category, راز آفرينش/The Mystery of Creation.   Ahmad Saidi also groups this quatrain under 'The Mystery of Creation.'  The visitor will discover, however, that many of the quatrains  do not fit into a simple category.  Complexity attests to the brilliance of these attributed-to-Khayyam quatrains.

There are  two further comments I wish to make about this quatrain.  First, it appears that Edward FitzGerald did not make use of it,  and the third line in my layout (or the 1st misra' of the second bayt), speaks to what I feel is often an urgency, even despair, which is often found in these quatrains:  "No  one  fairly and squarely address what is the only important issue in this debate..."  The speaker likely believes that no one can solve the riddle but the despair as I see it comes from the failure of an attempt to untangle the mystery.  This rhetorical question in the final line of the quatrain is a statement of despair.   Elwell-Sutton translated the last two lines less forcefully:  "Will no one ever tell us truthfully/Whence we have come, and whither do we go?"

This quatrain (Quatrain 1) is one of the first 16 of the 36  "key" quatrains which Ali Dashti selects because he believes the 36 were likely written by Khayyam.   The first 16 of the 36 are attributed to Khayyam in   sources nearer in time to Khayyam's life  and they reflect for Dashti views consonant with this astronomer and mathematician.   Language and conventions expressed in these quatrains  are  appropriate as well,  but in the end for Dasthi and others who claim authenticity in the  quatrains they attribute  to Khayyam, the  choice depends on  the  preference of the selector.

Here is an opinion  about "authenticity" in general and a useful guide to the problem of the proliferation of quatrains attributed to Khayyam:

        Therefore I suggest that we focus on the "Khayyamian school of thought" rather than Khayyam the person, thereby making the question of who was the real Khayyam as well as the authenticity of his poems somewhat irrelevant to the message of this school of thought attributed to Khayyam...The fact that there are hundreds of quatrains which have been attributed to Khayyam throughout the centuries, in my view, is not a liability but an asset. (The Wine of Wisdom: The Life, Poetry and Philosophy of Omar Khayyam, Mehdi Aminrazavi, Oneworld Publications, Oxford, 2005, 14, 16).

َMehdi Aminrazavi (p. 16 of his Wine of Wisdom) has, however, accepted as authentic the 178 quatrains in the work of Mohammad  'Ali Furughi and Qasim Ghani.   Parichehr Kasra bases her translation and commentary on Forughi-Ghani's 178 quatrains and has printed all 178 of them.    Sadeq Hedayat ascribes 143 quatrains (he considers 35 of them doubtful) to Khayyam.  Hedayat's "choices" are favored by  Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs  in their translation: The Ruba'iyyat of Omar Khayyam,  Penguin, 1981, where ( p.30)  Peter Avery states that Hedayat's selections are "the more convincing to anybody concerned with literature rather than with whether or not Khayyam composed all or some of the poems" (here "more convincing" in this respect than the selections of Forughi and Qasim Ghani).

Quatrain 2

اجزای پياله ای که در هم  پيوست

بشکستن آ ن  روا  نميدارد  مست

چندين سر و پای نازنين و بر و دست 

در مهرکه  پيوست و بکين که شکست

                                          source, Dashti 22, p. 248

ajzaa-ye piyaale'i ke dar ham peyvast
beshkastan-e aan ravaa namidaarad mast
chandin sar o paa-ye naazanin o bar o dast
dar mehr-e ke peyvast o bekin-e ke shekast  

 

A lowly cup takes human form and shape,
Creation no mindless drunk would think to break.
And lovely people, heads and legs, bodies and hands...
What love made them?  Smashed them in spiteful hate?

 

Another said -- "Why, ne'er a peevish Boy

Would break the Bowl from which he drank in Joy;
And He that with his hand the Vessel made
Will surely not in after Wrath destroy!"
Edward FitzGerald, stanza 85 (5th ed)

FitzGerald's source, the Ouseley manuscript, varies slightly from the text above

 
That earthen bowl of such exquisite make,
Not even drunkards would attempt to break;
So many lovely heads and dainty hands --
For whom He makes, for spite of whom does break?
Ahmad Saidi, quatrain 66 

Behold these cups!  Can He who deigned to make them,
In wanton freak let ruin overtake them,
So many shapely feet and hands and heads, --
What love drove Him to make, what wrath to break them?
E. H. Whinfield, quatrain 42

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain: 1. The parts of a cup which have been assembled --the cup has components or "members," اجزا which correspond to the heads, feet, trunks and hands of human forms, which we see below.  And these cup parts are  recycled from the dust or clay of those humans who have gone before  2.  The smashing of them no drunk will allow --besides "the drunk," مست  carries with it the sense of careless, heedless, mindless.  I have considered doing away with "drunk" altogether in favor of a word or expression for someone not mindful of higher or spiritual matters 3. So many lovely heads and legs and breasts and hands --The third line has a number of variations, two of which I would like to mention here:  چندين سر و پای نازنين از سر دست , the Ouseley manuscript which FitzGerald used, and Hedayat's  reading (quatrain  44)  چندين سر و ساق نازنين و کف دست.  I like the Ouseley reading -- these lovely people were assembled with a turn of the hand, effortlessly, and then smashed in the same way.  The Hedayat variation, کف دست, kaf-e dast,  brings to mind the hand of the potter who shapes the clay with the palms of his hand, carefully, skillfully, lovingly, although kaf-e dast directly refers to the creation, the human creation.  Through this image, Hedayat' s reading reinforces the bewilderment and anger expressed in the last two lines of the quatrain  4.  assembled by whose love/for love of whom and smashed by whose hate/for hate of whom -- whether the relationship is whose love/hate or for whom the love/hate was directed, which I think is a purposeful ambiguity on the writer's part, there is no ambiguity about what kind of love is expressed here.

Quatrain 3

یک قطرۀ آب بود و با دريا شد

یک ذرۀ خا ک با زمين یکجا شد

آمد شدن تو اندرين عالم چيست

آمد مگسی پديد و نا پيدا شد

source, Dashti 9, p. 245

 

 

yak qatre-ye aab bud o baa daryaa shod

yak zarre-ye khaak baa zamin yakjaa shod

aamad shodan-e to andarin aalam chist

aamad magasi padid o naapeydaa shod

 

A raindrop falls into a sea of drops,
a dustbeam falls to earth -- the journey stops.
How did you come here -- and where will you go?
"A fly darts in view and soon leaves sea and shore."

 

A drop of water fall'n on ocean wide,

A grain of earth become with earth allied;

What does your coming, going Here denote?--

A tiny fly appeared awhile, then died.

(Saidi, quatrain 64)

 

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain: 1. There was a drop of water and it joined with the sea 2. A grain of dust united with the earth 3. Your coming, going in the world, what is it? aamad shodan-e to = aamadan va raftan-e to 4. The coming was a fly, visible, and it was not found

This quatrain apparently was not used by FitzGerald. In the speaker's view both the drop of water and the the grain of dust add to the accumulation of water and ground-dirt yet all mortals are just specks (tiny flies as Saidi so aptly puts it) which appear and soon disappear from sight. In this quatrain, as in the first two above and in many of the quatrains attributed to Khayyam, the final line delivers a punch or a verdict on what precedes.

Quatrain 4

دارنده چو ترکیب طبایع آراست

باز از چه سبب فکندش اندر کم و کاست

گر نیک نیامد این بنا عیب کراست

ور نیک آمد خرابی از بهر چراست
source, Dashti 19, p. 247

daarande cho tarkib-e tabaaye' aaraast
baaz az che sabab fakandash andar kam o kaast
gar nik nayaamad in benaa ayb keraast
var nik aamad kharaabi az bahr-e cheraast

(Dashti)

When the Creator constructed Nature

Why stop short of making perfect creatures?

If the model wasn’t good, who’s to blame?

But if good, why break it ... who can explain?

دارنده چو ترکیب طبایع آراست

ازبهر چه او فکندش اندر کم و کاست؟

گر نیک آمد، شکستن از بهر چه بود؟

ورنیک نیامد این صُور عیب کراست؟
source, Hedayat 11 (& Whinfield 126;
Forughi, 31 (Kasra), with second misrâ‘ reading:

ازبهر چه افکندش اندر کم و کاست

daarande cho tarkib-e tabaaye' aaraast
az bahr-e che ’u fakandash andar kam o kaast
gar nik aamad shekastan az bahr-e che bud
var nik nayaamad in sovar ayb keraast

(Hedayat & Whinfield; Forughi 2nd line variation:
az bahr-e che afkandash andar kam o kaast

Since mortal compositions are cast by Hand Divine,
Why then the flaws that throw them out of line?
If formed sublime, why must He shatter them?
If not, to whom would we the fault assign?
Saidi, quatrain 35, 'slightly modified' by Aminrazavi, p. 51

And FitzGerald's improvisation, 5th edition, stanza 86:

After a momentary silence spake
Some vessel of a more ungainly Make:
"They sneer at me for leaning all awry;
What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?"

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain:
I have takenwhat follows in this paragraph, with modifications, from Mehdi Aminrazavi's Wine of Wisdom, chapter 2. Writing in the last quarter of the 12th century, fifty or so years (?) after Khayyam's death, Fakhroddin Razi speaks about Omar Khayyam and quotes this quatrain. It was likely the first quatrain attributed to Omar Khayyam which Khayyam wrote in Persian (see Elwell-Sutton, 36 and Aminrazavi, 51 -- full citation in Bibliography). In chapter 2 of The Wine of Wisdom (passim), Aminrazavi discusses the issue of theodicy (God's ways) central to the quatrain -- how a perfect God creates imperfect creatures. To show the sort of person Khayyam was thought to be, Aminrazavi gives biographical testimony from contemporaries and biographers who wrote after Khayyam had died. Khayyam is judged faithful and he is referred to as misled or perplexed. There is no question of his stance on Islam, his piety, as Aminrazavi cites evidence for this from his mathematical and philosophical writings and from the way others respected him, referring to him for example as hujjat al-haqq ('source and authority of truth'). The problem is not that his biographers viewed him, say, as both pious and defiant but as one or the other. Aminrazavi states (pp. 57-58) that this ambiguity in Khayyam reflects the character, the way of a 'complex figure who acknowledges that to exist is to suffer, to question, to doubt, and to wonder, and yet he acknowledges the religious dimension of humans by being a practicing Muslim.'

This quatrain appears on the website, http://128.187.33.4/persian/ and it is accompanied by a recording and by a metric chart, along with the text of the Calcutta manuscript used by FitzGerald. The Calcutta version and Hedayat's (11), are similar at least in sentiment but depart from Dashti's text by "reversing" lines 3 and 4 -- think of the 3rd line of the Persian in Dashti (the 3rd in my translation) coming last. I like the quatrain as Dashti has it. The third line startles, but the fourth sums up, outpunches the previous line by the message that the destruction of life, and a life that in all probability is a good and well-lived life, cannot be explained in the speaker's view. I have printed both Dashti's and Hedayat's text. Without a critical edition, and in the absence of discussion about these two 'texts,' we can't be sure which, if either, is original.
1. The creator/keeper/possessor/'divine hand' when he/it got ready the composition of natures (when the Creator constructed Nature) - I read chon as circumstantial rather than causal 2. Why did he go throw it away/ invalidate it (nature) by shortcomings -- why did he stop short of perfection? I found this line difficult; it is possible that اندر is part of the verb -- it is a compound verb: why did He throw shortcomings, destruction, ' deconstruction', into it, that is, Nature ( ش - ). Avery & Heath-Stubbs translate: "For what reason does He cast it into diminution and decay? Elwell-Sutton: "Why then did He disperse them once again?" (quatrain 19, p. 190, In Search of Omar Khayyam). But I don't believe anything was added, unless this is another way of expressing idiomatically 'coming up short' or slip-shodiness. If deficiencies were added, bad results would always occur and the point is that they do not. baaz here reminds me of the English 'go and do something' but baaz az che sabab may simply mean 'why.'3. If the structure did not come out well, who is at fault/to whom is (ke-raa-st) the fault? 4. If it comes out well, 'on account of why' /just why is there wrecking?

Questions about the quatrain: Is Khayyam thinking, trying to make sense of why, in a mathematically ordered universe or given mathematical certainties, should uncertainties exist by the hand of the Supreme Mathematician? I think so. And about the possibilities of a compound verb andar fakand(-ash): if kam o kaast meant 'decrepitude and death' then these 'additions' would fit with the last two lines -- why did he go and throw in 'disease and death'? Why did the Creator add this element of finality to the other elements in the mix of Nature? When I first read this quatrain I saw it this way -- anger at the sorrowful destruction of human life. Perhaps Avery/Heath-Stubbs mean this in their translation of the second line above. But Michael Hillmann's tranlsation is better:

When the elements were combined in creation
Why did the Maker endow them with transience?
If it did not work out well, fault is whose?
And if it turned out well, why destroy it?
Michael Craig Hillmann, Iranian Culture, p. 45 (see Bibliography)

Quatrain 5

 

هر ذره  که  بر روی  زمینی  بوده است

خورشید رخی زهره جبینی  بوده است

گرد  از رخ  نازنین  به  آزرم  فشان

کان هم رخ  خوب  نازنینی  بوده است

source, Dashti 37, p. 250 

har zarre ke bar ru-ye zamini budast

khorshid rokhi zohre jabini budast

gard az rokh-e naazanin be aazarm fashaan 

kaan ham rokh-e khub-e naazanini budast 

  

 

Every spinkling of dust
 ever on earth's face 
composed a radiant face, 
a Venus-brow. 
Brush the dust from your lovely face in respect; 

this dust you brush belonged to a precious face.

 

Each particle of earth on ground you see --

A beauty proud like Venus once was she;

Ah, gently wipe the dust from Loveling's face --

That, too, was once a beauty fair and free. 

Saidi, quatrain 86 

 

 

    Variants worth noting occur in the second and third lines of the Persian: 

    2nd line:   پیش از من و تو تاج و نگینی بوده است  

                        pish az man o to taaj o nagini budast 

                       were before you and me  crown and ring-stone

    3rd line:   instead of رخی نازنین   read  رخی آستین,  rokhi aastin, sleeve-face

 

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain:

More than the plain fact of our existence and passing out of existence, this quatrain acknowledges the beauty and splendor in the composition of those who have gone before.  1.  Every atom/speck of dust which has existed on earth's face 2. Has been a face like the sun, a brow like Venus  These sun-faced, Venus-browed compounds, 'appositional possessive compounds',  a term which Whitney used in his Sanskrit Grammar (could be that Sanskrit is the mother of all Indoiranoeuropean compounds but this notion now may be outmoded).  They are lovely, and on the subject of Persian compounds, Sir William Jones said: "One of the chief beauties of the Persian language is the frequent use of compound adjectives; in the variety and elegance of which it surpasses not only the German and English but even the Greek" (William Jones, A Grammar of the Persian Language, 1771, Scolar Press Facsimile, Scolar Press Limited, Menston, England, 1969, 70)  3. The dust from the lovely face brush it off with respect به  آزرم   I have translated 'in respect.'  The speaker exhorts us to let  memory 'brush the dust, etc.'  -- memory, which reminds  us to render homage, show respect, be gentle and mindful.   There is no compelling reason to say 'from your lovely face.' نازنین  may be a substantive not a modifier -- so, 'the face of elegance, of loveliness (that elegance and loveliness the speaker describes in the second line -- this idea I took  from Saidi, above) 4.  Since that face too has been a good and lovely face.

 

Questions about the quatrain: This is a question about adjective/substantive compounds.  Are there studies which classify Persian compounds and even compare them with 'inherited' Indo-iranian-european compounds?

 

   FitzGerald, according to Heron-Allen, does not use this quatrain, but he has this stanza (19, 5th edition):

 

 I sometimes think that never blows so red

                   The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;                 

That every Hyacinth the Garden wears

Dropt in her lap from some once lovely Head.

 

    The quatrain from the Ouselely MS. which FitzGerald consulted was according to Heron-Allen:

  هر جا  که  گلی و لاله زاری  بودست

 

از سُرخی  ِ خون  شهریاری  بودست

 

هر شاخ بنفشه  کز  زمین  می روید

 

خالیست که  بر رخ  نگاری  بودست

 

har jaa ke goli yo laalezaari budast

az sorkhi-ye khun-e  shahriyaari budast

har shaakh-e benafshe kaz zamin mi ruyad

khaalist ke bar rokh-e negaari budast 

 Where ruddy tulips grow and roses red,
Know that a mighty monarch's blood was shed;
        And where the violet rears her purple tuft,
Be sure some black-moled girl doth rest her head.
 Whinfield, quatrain 104

 

 

 

Quatrain 6

چون ابر به نوروز رخ لاله بشست

بر خیز و به جام باده کن عزم درست

کاین سبزه که امروز تماشا گه توست

فردا همه از خاک تو بر خواهد رست
source, Dashti 62, p. 255  & see  '62a' in following update

chon abr be nowruz rokh-e laale beshost
bar khiz o be jaam-e baade kon azm dorost
kin sabze ke emruz tamaashaagah-e tost
fardaa hame az khaak-e to bar khaahad rost 

Cloudbursts have washed the tulip's face,
New Year beckons you rise,
be awash in wine.
This garden is  yours today --
tomorrow's
 grows green from your dust.

and this companion piece:

ابر آمد و زار بر سر سبزه گریست

بی بادۀ  گلرنگ نمیشاید زیست 

این سبزه که امروز تماشا گه ماست

تا سبزۀ خاک ما تماشا گه کیست 

source, Hedayat 61

abr aamad o zaar bar sar-e sabze gerist

bi baade-ye golrang nemishaayad zist

in sabze ke emruz tamaashaa gah-e maast

taa sabze-ye khaak-e maa tamaashaa gah-e kist

 

A cloudburst came pouring tears on the  green...

without red wine what joy is there in life?
This meadow is our happiness just today,
but who will play in the meadow of our dust?

 

A cloud outpours its heart on lawn, and says:--

"A loveless life is only loss of days." 

This lawn is pleasing now,-- O! could I be

A lawn in future where some Angel plays. 

Govinda Tirtha, quatrain 3. 34

(see the bibliography for his Nectar of Grace and quatrain 30, especially the update) 

 

 Translation & Discussion of the quatrain (no.6):

1.  When the raincloud at Newyear has washed the face of the tulip - This Newyear is of course, Nowruz, which comes at the vernal equinox when the country gives way to re-emerging life and greenery 2.  Rise and be fully intent on a cup of wine - "fully fix your resolve on drinking a cup of wine." From what follows, the time to get on with enjoyment is now. 3.  Since this green meadow, which is our viewing today 4.  Tomorrow, all (of it) will spring forth from our dust. FitzGerald did not use the first two lines  of weblog Quatrain 6 or the first two lines of  the companion quatrain in his Stanza 23 below, but Heron-Allen notes that he employs the last two lines of both, a familiar refrain,  "the echo of a sentiment that recurs continually in the originals." : 

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?

( Stanza 23, 5th edition)

('They' in line 2 are likely یاران موافق , yaaraan-e movaafeq: For some we loved, the loveliest and  the best ... Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before/And one by one crept silently to rest.  Stanza 22) 

There is a CD of Ahmad Shamlou reciting Khayyam (www.IranianMusic.com).  In the collection of quatrains, Shamlou  recites this weblog quatrain and Mohammad Reza Shajarian sings the companion piece (Hedayat 61).

Update on Tuesday by Site Owner

Quatrain '62a'  (Elwell-Sutton)

Posted also as Quatrain 13 in this weblog 

می خور که فلک بهر هلاک من و تو

قصدی دارد بجان پاک من و تو

در سبزه نشین و می روشن می خور

کاین سبزه بسی دمد زخاک من و تو

may khor ke falak bahr-e halaak-e man o to
qasdi daarad bejaan-e paak-e man o to
dar sabze neshin o may-ye rowshan mi khor
kin sabze basi damad ze khaak-e man o to

Drink wine, for heaven will destroy us both;
It plots against my blameless life and yours.
Sit on the grass and drink the ruby wine,
For soon the grass will flourish on your dust.

  Elwell-Sutton, quatrain 62a

 

This quatrain appears as number 14 in the first 16 of Dashti's  36 key quatrains, but it does not appear in the final list of his 75 chosen quatrains.  This is puzzling since I cannot find any further reference, not even a footnote, to this quatrain in  دمی با خیام.    Hedayat includes it (64), with no textual variations, Forughi has it as well (152 ), and it appears in Whinfield (390) with variations in lines 1 and 3.  Elwell-Sutton, In Search of Omar Khayyam,  numbers it '62a' -- perhaps because of the similarities of the sentiment  expressed in the last two lines.

Quatrain 7

وقت سحراست  خیز  ای مایۀ  ناز

نرمک نرمک باده  ده  و  چنگ نواز

کانها که بجایند نپایند دراز

وآنها  که شدند  کس نمی آید باز

 source, Dashti, quatrain 16, p. 247

vaqt-e sahar ast khiz ay maaye-ye naaz
narmak narmak baade deh o chang navaaz
kaanhaa ke bejaayand napaayand daraaz
vaanhaa ke shodand kas nemi aayad baz 

Here is the dawn, my Love, arise, O pray,
Partake of wine and tune the lyre to play --
Of those alive none shall remain for long,
Nor any shall return who've passed away.
Saidi, quatrain 26 

It is the hour of dawn; rise, O essence of delicacy, and softly, softly drink wine and play on the lute. For those who have remained will not last long, and of those who have gone, not one will return.
Parichehr Kasra, quatrain 113 --Forughi's text -- hereafter, "Kasra"

 Translation & Discussion of the quatrain:
1.   It is the time of daybreak, arise, o source of style/charm/coyness/sweetness/aloofness/delight/"my love" which Saidi has and which embodies all the above renderings and more  2. Softly, softly pour the wine and strum the lyre --the Dashti text has  باده  ده   "pour the wine."  It's باده  خور , "drink wine"  in  Forughi, Saidi and Hedayat (115).  3. Since those who are here will not be here long --  is bejaayand preposition + jaa(y) + 3rd person ending (-and) or is there a verb, jaayidan?  Saidi's source-text reads:

کانها که بپایدد نمانند دراز
kaanhaa ke bepaayand namaanand daraaz,
since those who reside here will not remain here long, which, although it seems to mean the same as the text above, is for me, at least, an easier read.
4. And those who departed, not one has come back.

Heron-Allen claims that this quatrain was one of four quatrains which inspired FitzGerald's Stanza 3 (5th):

And, as the cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted--" Open then the Door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more." 

Questions about the quatrain:
I'd like to know more about naaz-- how it's used --  seems to me that who has naaz has the essence of style, a beguiling style, has got 'vibe' as was said a few years ago and which is still a vibrant word today, has got 'it' -- the expression of more than a half-century ago.  Here it is likely 'my love' as Ahmad Saidi suggests in his translation, and need not carry the sense of cruel and delicious aloofness of the beloved; however, in the context of the quatrain, there may be the exhortation to the beloved by the lover to enter the space of the present, free from aloofness and guile, since as FitzGerald:  "You know how little while we have to stay/And, once departed, may return no more."

Quatrain 8

 

این بحر وجود آمده بیرون ز نهفت 

کس نیست که این  گوهر تحقیق بسفت

 

هر کس سخنی از سر سودا گفتند

 

زان  روی که هست کس نمی داند گفت

source, Dashti 2, p. 244 

 

in bahr-e vojud aamade birun ze nehoft

kas nist ke in gawhar-e tahqiq besoft 

har kas sokhani az sar-e sawdaa goftand

zaan ru-ye ke hast kas nemi daanad goft

 

The Sea of Life from secret well has sprung,
 This pearl of inquiry no one has strung;
 And fancies are the thoughts learn'd men expound--  
 Unheard is yet the truth from any tongue.

 Saidi, quatrain 74

 

Existence comes from who knows where --
a gem of a puzzle no one has cracked.
Emotions run wild in a sea of opinions
since no one can say it is 'this' and that's that.

 

 Translation & Discussion of the quatrain:

 1. This sea of existence came out of a hidden place/out of concealment 2.  There is no one who has pierced this gem of certainty --  no one has pierced the pearl of  true knowledge, the core truth, on the origin of existence.    Kasra, quatrain 14 (Forughi), says:  "If this pearl could be pierced, then it could be added to the string of knowledge." 3. Every one says things based on emotion/feelings  --  the past tense is used to express a present truth, a valid conclusion (based on what comes before it in this case)  4.  Of that reason for which/why it exists no one can say -- daanestan here = 'to be able to ...'

 

 

 

 

Quatrain 9

از دی که گذشت هیچ از آن یاد مکن

فردا که نیامده است فریاد مکن

بر نامده و گذشته بنیاد مکن

حالی خوش باش و عمر بر باد مکن
 source, Dashti 54, p. 253-254

az day ke gozasht hich az aan yaad makon
fardaa ke nayaamadast faryaad makon
bar naamade wo gozashte bonyaad makon
haali khosh baash o omr bar baad makon 

The yesterday that's  gone
you must  forget what it was;
for the tomorrow not come
don't flitter and  fuss.
In the not-come and the gone
make them not your cause
Be happy just now
don't shift with the breeze.

 When Yesterday is vanished in the past,
And Morrow lingers in the future vast,
To neither give a thought but prize the hour;
For that is all you have and Time flies fast.
Saidi, quatrain 123 

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain: 
FitzGerald apparently did not use this quatrain; however, Saidi's very good rendition calls FitzGerald to mind.
1. The yesterday which has passed, do not mark it down -- Newcomers to Persian may have already noted the prefix - which can be used to negate the imperative: ma+kon.   My first experience with ma-  was in madaar -- 'don't hold/have' and I discovered this prefix through a misread; I read instead maadar - 'mother' which I tried, without success, to make fit the context. 2.  The tomorrow which has not come, do not fuss over it.  3.  Do not lay the foundation on the not-come and gone.  4.  Be happy in the present, don't throw life to the wind.  Or accurately for this idiom, 'don't throw life to the wind', don't waste your time commemorating the past and worrying over the future

Quatrain 10

چون روزی وعمر بیش و کم نتوان کرد

دل را به کم و بیش دژم نتوان کرد

کار من و تو چنانکه رأی من و توست

از موم به دست خویش هم نتوان کرد
source, Dashti 73, p. 257

chon ruzi vo omr bish o kam natvaan kard
del raa be kam o bish dozham natvaan kard
kaar-e man o to chonaanke ray-ye man o tost
az mum be dast-e khish ham natvaan kard

Since life moves by life's law and not by our will,
we should spare ourselves heartbreak --
no day can we change.
And whatever we do, what we wish it to be,
we cannot craft from wax the change we would have.

and literally, with glosses, A. J. Arberry:
Since it is impossible to augment or lessen (one's) sustenance and life, it is vain (lit. "impossible") to make oneself miserable over the less and the more; my affairs and thine, after my opinions and thine, it is impossible for us to mould -- even (though they were) like wax in our hands.
( A.J. Arberry, The Rubā‘īyāt of Omar Khayyām, London, 1949, quatrain 149)

Since life and fare no more no less shall be,
Why let that be the cause of misery;
Your life and mine we can never remold
Like wax in the hand the way we want it to be.
Saidi, quatrain 113

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain:
1. Since our lot in life and days in life cannot be made more or less 2. Our hearts cannot get sick over "less or more" -- does this line have two meanings? First, our hearts cannot, cannot afford to, needn't get sick over less or more and second, if we accept the obvious non-alteration of our days and life, we then cannot get sick over how much more or how much less 3. My action and your action as is the belief /opinion of you and me 4. Also cannot be shaped from wax in the hand (of you and me), that is, we cannot change or reshape our past, present and future actions to the way we think about them, see them, have an opinion of the way they should be, just as we cannot change our lot and life.

Metrics: The visitor can't help noticing (and it has been seen before) the repetitious end-rhymes in lines 1,2 and 4, rhymes "deep" into each of these lines. And for all visitors, especially readers of the Persian, there is the common elision in natavaan which results in natvaan ( نتْوان ). CvCvCVC = Consonant, short vowel, Consonant, short vowel, Consonant , Long Vowel, Consonant -- in this situation, the second short vowel will be elided, that is, 'struck out.' For a useful diagram of the quatrain/robâ'i meter, go to http://128.187.33.4/persian/ -- redirected from Persian in Texas--, select 'poetry' and then click on 'A Few Quatrains of Omar Khayyam. Midway down the right side of page, click on 'robâ'i meter' and you have before you Connie Bobroff's easy-to-read metric diagram powered from behind the scenes by Professor Gernot Windfuhr, whose contribution is gratefully acknowledged.

Quatrain 11

 

بر چشم  تو عالم ارچه  می آرایند

 

مگرای  بدان  که عاقلان نگرایند

 

بسیار چو تو  روند و بسیار آیند

 

بِربای نصیب خویش  کت  بِربایند

    source, Dashti 66, p. 255 (& Forughi 69)
 

bar cheshm-e to aalam ar che mi aaraayand

magraay bedaan ke aaqelaan nagraayand

besyaar cho to ravand o besyaar aayand

berbaay nasib-e khish kat berbaayand

 

 

'Though they show the world to turn your head
don't go there where the wise never tread.
They come like you and like you they go,
take what's yours, they'll take you off dead.

-

Though they bedeck the world to catch your eyes,

Be tempted not as never are the wise;

so many like you come, so many go--

You'd better get your share before life flies.

Saidi, quatrain 111

 

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain: 

1.  Although they display the world for your eye -- or, although the world is displayed for your eye/'to catch your eyes' as Saidi writes 2.  Do not be intent on that which the wise are not intent on -- as subsequent quatrains will reveal, the wise shun the intense acquisition of knowledge; they are not intent on gaining wealth and keeping busy 3. Many like you (will) go and many (will) come  4. Grab your own share because they will be grabbing you -- a few khayyamic things to hold to and to seek: confidence in the knowledge which one innately possesses, wine, love, simple living.  These 'lists' remind me of another poem by Martial found in the navigational bar to the right under 'Other Poems'

 

. 

 

Quatrain 12

می خور که به زیرگِل بسی خواهی خفت

بی مونس و بی حریف و بی همدم و جفت

زنهار به کس مگو تو این راز نهفت

هر لاله که پژمرد نخواهد بشکفت
source, Dashti 17, p. 247

may khor ke be zir-e gel basi khaahi khoft
bi munes o bi harif o bi hamdam o joft
zenhaar be kas magu to in raaz-e nehoft
har laale ke pezhmord nakhaahad beshkoft

Drink wine! long must you sleep within the tomb,
Without a friend, or wife to cheer your gloom;
Hear what I say, and tell it not again,
"Never again can withered tulips bloom."
Whinfield, quatrain 107

Ah, drink! Beneath the earth you shall be lain,
Without friend, mate or spouse you shall remain --
This hidden mystery to none explain:
The tulip withered won't its bloom regain!
Saidi, quatrain 88

Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise !
One thing at least is certain-- This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.
FitzGerald, stanza 63, 5th edition
(FG has italicized 'This' in line 2)

 Translation & Discussion of the quatrain:
1.  Drink wine because you will sleep beneath the ground for a long time  2. Without companion, without mate, without  lover and partner -- I suppose these are synonymous (some translations shorten the list) yet the list is more 'Persian' and intimate as it continues: hamdam -- 'sharing the same breath/or language' and joft -- someone 'yoked' a word which joft is cognate with; munes is more general, 'associate' likely nails it while harif sometimes is used for a person you don't like  3.  Careful! Don't tell anyone this hidden secret -- there may be many other 'injunctive' passages like this one in Persian literature.  I think of Rumi, ghazal 2219 from the divan-e shams-e tabrizi, where intense feelings can be dissipated by talk or cannot be expressed through words.  Here it serves two purposes: the first order is for recipients of the 'secret' to take this advice and use it and secondly, with irony, many, if told this, would not see the meaning.  Why waste words on those who cling to prevalent teaching? 4. The flower which has withered will not bloom
Returning to FitzGerald ---in the first edition FitzGerald has: Oh, come with old Khayyam and leave the Wise/To talk: one thing is certain, that Life flies.  This very quatrain (that is quatrain 12 in this weblog)  appeared in both of FitzGerald's sources, and the last two lines of the quatrain inspired the stanza above; the first two lines inspired part of the following stanza (24, 5th edition; Heron-Allen, pp. 41 and 97).

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
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and -- sans End!

Quatrain 13

This quatrain is also paired with weblog Quatrain 6

می خور که فلک بهر هلاک من و تو

قصدی دارد بجان پاک من و تو

در سبزه نشین و می روشن می خور

کاین سبزه بسی دمد زخاک من و تو

source, Dashti '62a' -- Elwell-Sutton

may khor ke falak bahr-e halaak-e man o to
qasdi daarad bejaan-e paak-e man o to
dar sabze neshin o may-ye rawshan mi khor
kin sabze basi damad ze khaak-e man o to

 

Drink wine, for heaven will destroy us both;
It plots against my blameless life and yours.
Sit on the grass and drink  the ruby wine,

For soon this grass will flourish on your dust.

(Elwell-Sutton, Quatrain 62a)

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain:
This quatrain appears as number 14 in the first 16 of Dashti's 36 key quatrains, but it does not appear in his final list of the 75 chosen quatrains. This is puzzling since I cannot so far find any further reference, not even a footnote, to this quatrain in دمی با خیام .   Hedayat includes it (64), with no textual variations, and Forughi has it as well (152, Kasra) also with no variations from the source above.  Ahmad Saidi does not include it.  Elwell-Sutton (In Search of Omar Khayyam)   numbers this quatrain '62a' -- quite likely because of the similarities of the sentiment expressed in the last two lines.
1. Drink wine, since heaven for the destruction of you and me 2. Has designs on the pure souls of you and me...the verb, qasdi daarad, with the meaning of 'wishing' and by this fact, 'intending,' here 'takes'  two prepositional phrase objects, bahr-e .../be-...3. Sit on the lawn and drink bright wine 4. Since the grass for a long time will breathe out/sprout from your dust and mine

Quatrain 14

بر سنگ زدم دوش سبوی کاشی

سرمست بدم که کردم این اوباشی

با من به زبان حال می گفت سبوی

من چون تو بدم تو نیز چون من باشی
source, Dashti 40, p. 251

bar sang zadam dush sabu-ye kaashi
sarmast bodam ke kardam in awbaashi
baa man be zabaan-e haal mi goft sabuy
man chon to bodam niz chon man baashi

I smashed my drinking cup last night,
a low-down thing to do when drunk;
the cup spoke out in  plain cup-talk:
'I was like you one day --
 like me you'll soon be clay.'

Against a stone I dashed the jug last night--
(Drunk was I then and made a shameful sight):
In muttered words I heard the jug forewarn:
"Like you was I--like mine shall be your plight!"
Saidi, quatrain 81

Last night I dropped and smashed my porcelain bowl,
A clumsy folly in a bout of drinking.
The shattered bowl in dumb appeal cried out,
'I was like you, you too will be like me!'
Elwell-Sutton, quatrain 40

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain:
1. Upon a stone last night I smashed the Kashanware cup - kaashi/ کاشی may mean 'made in Kashan' or simply, a glazed cup or jug. The city, famous for textiles and pottery, gave its name to glazed pottery and especially to decorative glazed tiles. 2. I was drunk when I did this low-down thing... drunk, yes, but only a thoughtless drinker would smash his cup (compare Quatrain 2, especially line 2) 3. The jug* was speaking to me in language to the point... the speaker imagines that the jug, if it could speak, would be thinking and speaking right to the point of this cup-smashing business, as follows 4. "I was like you and you will also be like me"... one day clay "like me" but well before that, smashed like the jug too -- see Quatrain 2. 

*in line 3, Dashti will have had recourse to a manuscript or collection which read sabuy/ سبوی . Forughi (164) and Hedayat (67) have sabu. I see no advantage in Dashti's reading. I have kept it but italicized the final letter.

Quatrain 15

ای پیر خردمند پگه تر بر خیز

وان کودک خاک بیز را بنگر تیز

پندش ده و گو که نرم نرمک می بیز

مغز سر  کیقباد  و چشم  پرویز
source, Dashti 38, p. 251

ay pir-e kheradmand pagah tar bar khiz
vaan kudak-e khaak biz raa bengar tiz
pandash deh o gu ke narm narmak mi biz
maghz-e sar-e kayqobaad o cheshm-e parviz

O wise old man, rise up earlier in the morning and carefully watch that child who sifts the dust. Counsel him and say: "Gently, gently sift the brain of Kai-qūbad's head and the eyes of Parvīz!"
Kasra, quatrain 112

O Wise Graybeard! Awake to morning breeze;
Behold the boy who sweeps the dust, and please,
Counsel him thus: "O gentle, gentle be
With head of Qobad and eyes of Parveez."

Saidi, quatrain 87

 (see Saidi's notes, p. 248-9, on the ancient hero, Key-Qobad, founder of the Keyanian dynasty -- source: Ferdawsi's Shahname -- and Khosrow Parviz (Khosrow The Conqueror)/Khosrow II, Sasanian dynast who ruled from 590-628 A.D.)

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain:
1. O wise old man, get up early at dawn ... see below on pagah tar 2. The boy who sweeps the ground, keep a sharp eye on him...khaak biz, lit. ground/earth sweeper. I wonder if khaak biz is considered a compound by Persian grammarians; or is it simply noun+verbal suffix? In English we might think of it as a compound like 'streetsweeper'; biz is the present stem of the verb acting as an agent here and we can translate khaak biz as a compound whether 'officially' it is or not. These are just some of my musings, sitevisitor (and that's a compound). I realize that Persian is rich in compounds yet I have not seen any classification of Persian compounds by classical indo-iranian standards, a question I brought up in weblog Quatrain 5; for example, 'streetsweeper' is a tatpurusha compound, where the first element has object relationship to the second, that is 'sweeper of the street.'  3. Advise him and say, "gently, gently sweep...ke will introduce a direct quote. mi biz, the imperative which usually takes no prefix or be-, sometimes as here, mi (only for the sake of the meter?).
4. (continuing above in '3') the brain of Kayqobad and the eye(s) of Parviz" maghz-e sar 'the marrow of the head'
(English 'marrow' and Persian maghz have a common ancestor in indo-iranian *mozgho- ). Kayqobad did not for what we know suffer at the end of his life but Khosrow, having once amassed great wealth, was later victim of a plot, thrown into prison and died several days later (for Khosrow/Chosroes, see Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chapter 46, passim). For the speaker of this quatrain, here was a great hero, Kayqobad, and the last powerful Sasanian monarch, Khosrow, now both reduced from power and life to death and dust.

 All about  پگه تر    pagah > dawn, early morning + tar > comparative suffix:

pagah tar : curiosity first made me wonder about the prefix pa- and then tar, the latter a strange use of the comparative to my thinking…pa comes from Avestan (and old Iranian), upā, cognate with Greek hypo and Latin (s)ub, and prefixed to gah ( گه/گاه ) it carries the meanings of ‘toward’/ ‘about’/’at’/‘at the time of’ – so pagah > ‘in time’/ ‘at an early time’/ ‘betimes’; but why tar? To get up earlier? Earlier than the boy who sweeps? I remembered reading in Szemerényi’s Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics (the 1996 OUP translation of Szemerényi’s revised 1990 Einführung in die vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft), that astar (mule) in new Persian didn’t mean according to him ‘horsier’ (almost a horse) but differentiated the mule from the ass, that is, ‘of the horse kind.’ I went to the source, p. 199, and found this discussion of the –tero suffix and read further, as he quotes Émile Beneviste, that the suffix –tero/here tar: qualifie surtout des notions de caractère spatial (positions dans l’espace et dans le temps). So I believe that pagah tar reflects this distinction and means not 'earlier' but ‘early not late in the dawning.' I have not yet looked into classical or archaic usage of Persian for examples of differentiation with –tar; if historical linguists visit the site, I'd like their opinion.

Quatrain 16

ایّام زمانه از کسی دارد ننگ

کو درغم ایّام نشیند دلتنگ

می نوش در آبگینه با نالۀ چنگ

زان پیش کت آبگینه آید برسنگ
source, Dashti 57, p. 254

ayyaam-e zamaane az kasi daarad nang
ku dar gham-e ayyaam neshinad deltang
may nush dar aabgine baa naale-ye chang
zaan pish kat aabgine aayad bar sang

Life scorns him
who sits sorrowing
over the days of  his life.
Let the lyre wail and lament--
you sit and drink a glass of wine
before your glass goes smashing on the rocks.

The days of time disdain him
Who sits sorrowing over the grief of time:
Drink a glass of wine to the notes of the harp,
Before all glasses are smashed on the rock.
Avery, quatrain 127  

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain:
1. The days of a (life-)time hold someone in disrepute/are ashamed of/scorn someone ... it seems to me that ayyaam-e zamaane means the time-span granted or alloted to mortals.  ayyaam-e zamaane can also be  'the world'  2. Who sits in sadness over the days mourning/heart worn out with anxiety-- ku = ke + 'u 3. Drink wine in a glass with/to the plaint of the lyre ... I like the idea of letting the lyre do the mourning while others drink, in contrast to those pining over the days of a life-time to the 'notes of the harp' 4. Before your glass comes onto the rock(s) -- I am taking the k-at  of zaan pish kat (ke + -at) as the qualifier of aabgine = 'your glass.'  Forughi and Hedayat both read zaan pish ke, which I would call a 'safer' or less ambiguous read -- Hedayat 127 and Forughi 118, both with the same text -- with a slight variation of what Dashti offers. Saidi does not translate it, and apparently FitzGerald does not use it (as he has not used some of the recent quatrains posted.)

Quatrain 17

جاوید نیم چو اندر این دهر مقیم

پس بی می و معشوق خطا یی است عظیم

تا کی ز قدیم و محدث امّیدم و بیم

چون من رفتم  جهان چه محدث و چه قدیم
source, Dashti 47, p. 252

 

jaavid nayam cho andar in dahr moqim

pas bi may o ma'shuq khataa 'ist azim

taa kay ze qadim o mohdas ommidam o bim
chon man raftam jahaan che mohdas che qadim

 My days in this world are marked by the end --
wine and love's absence is marked for sin.
Why pin hopes and fears on what caused this world,
once gone, causes dissolve and so do concerns.

I am not here forever in this world;
How sinful then to forfeit wine and love!
The world may be eternal or created;
Once I am gone, it matters not a scrap.
Elwell-Sutton, quatrain 47

 Since none remain forever in this Inn,
To be without belov'd and bowl is sin;
How long of Old and New, O Man of Wit?--
When dead, I care not new or old's the Inn.
Saidi, quatrain 9

  Since our stay is impermanent in this Inn ,
To be without wine and beloved is a sin;
O Hakīm, why worry if the world is created or eternal,
Once dead, what if created or eternal the inn.
Aminrazavi, p. 130 (The Wine of Wisdom)

We shall not stay here long, but while we do,
'Tis folly wine and sweehearts to eschew;
Why ask if earth etern or transient be?
Since you must go, it matters not to you.
Whinfield, quatrain 324 

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain:
1. Since I am not a dweller in this world forever -- Hedayat (93) and Forughi (127) read: chon nist maqaam-e maa dar in dahr moqim,

  چون نیست مقام ما دراین دهر مقیم

Since there is no place for us in this world as residents, which I first though accounted  for the first line readings in Saidi and Aminrazavi ('none remain'/'our stay').  But I see ('3' below) that Saidi uses another source.   2. So, without wine or beloved it is a great sin 3. How long is my hope and fear over the eternal and the created?
Saidi's source-text has this 3rd line variant:  تا کی ز قدیم و محدث ای مرد حکیم , taa kay ze qadim o mohdas ay mard-e hakim: Aminrazavi has this  note on Hakīm, p. 362 (note 104) -- 'The word "hakīm," which generally means "a wise man" in latter Islamic philosophy, became synonymous with a philosopher-theologian, a sage.' [I haven't yet figured out how to place the 'distinguishing'  dot under H/h]  4. When I have gone, the world...whether created or eternal...?  Peter Avery (quatrain 93) has this note on lines 3-4, 'created or eternal': The reference is to the dictum of Aristotle's neo-Platonic commentators that the world being coeval with the Unmovable Mover cannot have been created but must be eternal or 'continuous' with the One beyond Being.  In the Islamic or Abrahamic tradition, God has created the world.  Philosophers, as Avery remarks, would have viewed a world without beginning or end, that is 'eternal'/qadim.  Aminrazavi sums up the wisdom in this poem (p.130):  "What distinguishes this mode of being [being in the present, the 'here and now'] from a mode of knowledge is precisely the admission that amidst uncertainty, ignorance, and impermanence, it is not what you know that matters but how you live that matters, and this howness, to the dismay of metaphysicians, requires a wisdom that is fundamentally human."
 

Quatrain 18

ای آنکه نتیجۀ چهار و هفتی

وز هفت و چهار دایم اندر تفتی

می خور که هزار بار بیشت گفتم

باز آمدنت نیست چو رفتی رفتی
source, Dashti 15, p. 246

ay aanke natije-ye chahaar o hafti
vaz haft o chahaar daayem andar tafti
may khor ke hazaar baar bishat goftam
baaz aamadanat nist cho rafti rafti

O' you, the child of Seven and the Four,
In fray with Four and Seven evermore;
Drink wine! I warned a thousand times before,
Once gone, you shall return Here nevermore!
Saidi, quatrain 94

Child of four elements and sevenfold heaven,
Who fume and sweat because of these eleven,
Drink! I have told you seventy times seven,
Once gone, not hell will send you back, nor heaven.
Whinfield, quatrain 431

Ô toi qui es le résultat des quatre et des sept, je te vois bien embarrassé entre ces quatre et ces sept.  Bois du vin, car, je te l'ai dit plus de quatre fois, tu ne reviendras plus; une fois parti, tu es bien parti.
Nicolas, quatrain 389

Translation and Discussion of the quatrain: Saidi has these notes on the Seven and Four: "Four refers to the four simple substances, i.e., earth, air, water and fire, of which, according to the ancient and medieval philosophers, all material bodies were believed to be compounded ... Seven refers to the seven heavenly bodies called planets in Ptolemaic or geocentric astronomy, as they were observed to change their positions in respect to other heavenly bodies, the so-called fixed stars, which seemed to be stationary.  These bodies included the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, all of which were believed to revolve around the earth." [Saidi continues and notes the discovery of Uranus in 1781, Neptune in 1846 and in 1930, Pluto... see www.centauri-dreams.org for all new planetary naming and 'developments.']  1) o' you who are the product of the four and the seven 2) And you who are always in a heat from the four and seven -- those who specifically are obsessed, perhaps, or 'hot and bothered,' or going about distracted over planetary influences and how they manifest themselves in the course of a lifetime . - تفت /taft- conveys the meaning of heat/heated up 3) Drink wine! I told you more than a thousand times -- drink gives more promise in life than heavenly influences; Saidi's text reads in the 3rd line: 'pishat' rather than 'bishat' – 'I told you a thousand times before' rather than, 'I told you more than a thousand times.' The point obviously is made either way. The texts of Whinfield and Nicolas have, as evident from Nicolas' prose translation, chahaar baar in line 3 – that is 'more than four times 4) there is no coming back for you: when you have gone, you've gone -- the fourth line is the punch or payoff line. This is a familiar theme in the quatrains, and I thought of FitzGerald's often quoted (stanza 71, 5^th ed.):

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.

Quatrain 19

چون عمر بسر رسد چه بغداد و چه بلخ

پیمانه چو پر شود چه شیرین و چه تلخ

می نوش که بعد از من و تو ماه بسی

از سلخ به غرّه آید از غرّه به سلخ
source, Dashti 48, p. 252

chon omr besar rasad che baghdaad o che balkh
paymaane cho por shavad che shirin o che talkh
may nush ke ba'd az man o to maah-e basi
az salkh be ghorre aayad az ghorre be salkh

Forughi and Ghani, quatrain 53, and others have this 'inversion':

چون عمر بسر رسد چه شیرین و چه تلخ

پیمانه چو پر شود چه بغداد و چه بلخ

chon omr besar rasad che shirin o che talkh
paymaane cho por shavad che baghdaad o che balkh

When life reaches the end, what  matters the sweet and the bitter
When the Cup is full, what is Baghdad and what is Balkh …

And sour or sweet, why fuss since life shall fly,
At Balkh or Baghdad – why care where we die?
Drink wine, for silv'ry Moon will keep its beat
From full to new long after you and I.
Saidi, quatrain 10 

Whether at Naishápúr or Babylon ,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one .
FitzGerald, Stanza 8, 5^th ed.

 FitzGeraldiana:
Arberry (Romance, 116) and Heron-Allen (see quatrain viii, p. 18-19) claim that FitzGerald was influenced by Nicolas (below) in choosing Naishápúr:

                  چون میگذرد عمرچه شیرین و چه تلخ

             چون جان بلب آمد چه نشاپوُر و چه بلخ

chon migozarad omr che shirin o che talkh
chon jaan belab aamad che neshaapur o che balkh

Nicolas, quatrain 105

When a lifetime is past, what's the sweet and the bitter

When life mumbles away, what's Nishapur and Balkh

 

And in this mold was Whinfield, who also has نشاپور:

When life is spent, what's Balkh or Nishapore?
What sweet or bitter, when the cup runs o'er?
Come drink! full many a moon will wax and wane
In time to come, when we are here no more.
Whinfield, quatrain 134

Heron-Allen also refers us to Nicolas, quatrain 18, lines 3  & 4, and says that Nicolas in this quatrain had a direct influence on FitzGerald line 3. He translates:
Whether our Sākī holds the neck of the bottle in his hand,
Or the soul of wine oozes over the rim of the cup.

FitzGerald's  line 4, according to Heron-Allen, comes from the Calcutta MS, one of FitzGerald's two sources (lines 3 and 4 translated by him):
At the moment when I flee from destiny,
And fall like the leaf of the vine, from the branch.

Arberry tells us in The Romance of the Rubaiyat,  that FitzGerald used Latin as the language for his first translations of Khayyam.   Arberry calls it 'lazy Latin', p. 58, which likely means that FitzGerald did not bother to consult the classical masters of Latin verse for inspiration [although he had to have been familiar with Latin prosody].   Here (p.59) is FitzGerald's Latin quatrain (my translation below it): 

Sive Babylonem, sive Bagdad apud, Vita ruit,
Sive suavi, sive Vino Poculum mordaci fluit:
Bibe, bibe: nam sub Terra posthâc non bibendum erit:
Sine Vino, sine Sáki, semper dormiendum erit.

Be it Babylon or Baghdad , so Life goes,
And the Cup with Wine sweet or biting flows.
Drink up – in the Ground there's no time for bibbling,
Sans Wine, Sans Server, it's perpetual sleeping.

Translation and some more discussion of the quatrain: 1.  When life comes to the head/the end, what [is] Baghdad and what [is]Balkh? ....When I first read this line and until recently, I have always thought of it as "whether in Baghdad or in Balkh.'  Because of the conjunction, va/o, which occurs in the following line as well) I ask myself if  'what' is better-- 'what does it matter, Baghdad, Balkh or (Nishapur)... take your pick'.     Saidi has notes on Baghdad and Balkh, the importance of these two cities, gems of the west and the east (p.238-39).  Nishapur may have found its way into later MSS, since it is the city of Khayyam's birth and death and where he spent most of his life.  I don't believe Khayyam was ever in Baghdad, but he was in Balkh according to Nizami (of Samarqand), where one evening Khayyam regaled Nizami and others with the prediction that flower-blossoms would twice yearly  shower his grave at Nishapur (see E. G. Browne, Literary History of Persia, 2. 246-47)  2. When the cup is full, what [is]sweet, what [is] bitter?...  As above, what does it now matter if it was a sweet of a bitter life  3.  Drink wine, since after me and after you [there will be] many moons  [there will be many phases of the moon] 4.  They will come/stretch from the waning moon to the new moon, from the new moon to the waning moon...both salkh and ghorre are derived from Arabic.  Salkh literally is the stripped-down month -- the moon is 'gone' and ghorre is the splendor of the new moon.  Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon on ghorre: "the night, of the month, in which the new moon is first seen ... (likened) to the ghorre (blaze) on the forehead of a horse"