Quatrain 57

ای کاش که جای آرمیدن بودی

یا این ره دور را رسیدن بودی

کاش از پس صد هزار سال از دل خاک

چون سبزه امید بر دمیدن بودی

Dashti, quatrain 18, p. 247

'ay kaash ke jaa-ye 'aaramidan budi

yaa 'in rah-e dur raa rasidan budi

kaash az pas-e sad hazaar saal az del-e khaak

chon sabze 'omid bar damidan budi

Would but the Desert of the Fountain yield

One glimpse--if dimly, yet indeed reveal'd,

To which the fainting Traveller might spring,

As springs the trampled herbage of the field!

FitzGerald, stanza 97, 4th ed (not in 1st ed)

Ah, would there were a place wherein to rest--

An end at last to long road manifest--

That aft' a hundred thousand years, a hope

To spring as springs the herbage from earth's breast!

Saidi, quatrain 124

If I could find a place to rest...

Or a stop to this weary road,

If hope would blossom ever

like flowers from the deep earth's core.

Translation & Discussion of the quatrain:

1.  O' wish there were place for resting ... ای کاش که/'ay kaash ke is followed by the past tense of the verb with the conditional marker ی/i > budi.  2. Or were there arriving for this long road ... the continuation of the hope expressed in the first line 3.  Were there after a hundred thousand years out of the heart of the earth How to address such a staggering number of years?  The speaker may believe it will take 'forever,' 10 x the ultimate 10,000 years, for hope to spring forth again. Other editors, compilers, translators. such as Forughi-Ghani (163), Hedayat (22), Whinfield (442) and the roba'i likely consulted by FitzGerald (Heron-Allen, 141-3) read in the 3rd line, از پی/ 'az pay-e.  For translating از دل خاک/'az del-e khaak I am reminded of Yeat's 'from the deep heart's core' from his 'Lake Isle of Innisfree'  4.  Like greenery, were hope breathing/springing up/blooming

FitzGerald includes his stanza above in the last six stanzas of his poem as the day traveler-speaker winds down in resignation and acceptance that this life will not be a paradise on earth, a garden paradise or 'civilized' civilization (see Michael Hillmann's analysis, especially pages 56-60 in Iranian Culture).  To counter the criticism that FitzGerald does not render Khayyam accurately yet catches the spirit of Khayyam's quatrain, this very stanza does both; it is to my mind a marvelous rendition and close to the letter of the Khayyam-poem.