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"O tent-maker, that frame is but a tent, Thy soul the king, to realms of Nothing

bent;

And slaves shall strike the tent for a fresh use,

When the king rises and his night is spent."

Here we come upon a stanza beautifully rendered by Fitzgerald. Speaking of the body, he makes the poet say :

"Or is it but a tent where rests anon

A Sultan to his kingdom journeying on, And which the swarthy chamberlain shall strike,

Then, when the monarch rises to begone."

The difference from the original is verbally but slight; but it will be observed to seriously alter the significance. Khayyam's play on his name (Tent-maker) is sacrificed, so is the mockery of the soul's journey to an unreal kingdom. The word chamberlain is an inadequate substitute for the original farash, which indicates a class of slave appointed in the East for such duties, and to which the poet contemptuously likens Death.

It has been already said that this paper is not inteded in censure of Fitzgerald. Its object is only to afford some glimpses of the real Khayyam, who seems somewhat hidden in the English poet's graceful work. It is difficult to explain by isolated specimens Fitzgerald's deviations from his original, because his variation is general and total. The difference between him and Khayyam is the same as that between a group of epigrams and a long satire. As Mr. Whinfield says in his scholarly introduction, all the quatrains of Omar "are isolated in sense from the context;' meaning, doubtless, that the sense of one quatrain is not prolonged or continued into the quatrain that comes next in place. If any one will turn to one of the editions of Fitzgerald published by Mr. Quaritch, he will see a continuous poem of the nature of what Mr. Arnold calls a "criticism of life." In the text printed with Elihu Vedder's drawings, the order of the stanzas is altered to some extent,

which shows perhaps the difficulty of these arrangements. But the point is that they are all arbitrary perversions of an original whose scope and construction are of a wholly different kind. At the utmost, the rabaiyat can only be cast into groups according to general subject, and will then be found to indicate impulsive, almost incompatible, states of thought and feeling.

A sample of Fitzgerald's manner of paraphrase may be interesting. The two metrical stanzas are his: the prose that follows gives the literal English of the original.

"Oh Thou who didst with pitfall and with gin Beset the road I was to wander in!

Thou wilt not with Predestination round Enmesh me, and impute my fall to sin. "Oh Thou who man of basest clay didst make, And who with Eden didst devise the snake! For all the sin with which the face of man Is blackened, man's forgiveness give-and take."

"In my way-going Thou hast laid the snare in many a place. Thou sayest, I slay thee,' if I make default therein. The world is not free from Thy command a tittle. I do Thy command, and Thou callest me 'Sinner'!

“O Thou, of the sanctity of whose nature knowledge is not, and art indifferent both to our obedience and sin! I am drunk with sin, but sober with hope, in that my hope is in Thy great mercy."

Khayyam mocks at circumstances. Death is a slave: even life, saving so far as it is a scene of calm enjoyment, is a mere bubble. The noise of the Franks in Syria is deadened by distance the crimes of Hassan Sabah, the toils of Nizam-ul-Mulk, are ignored, while the poet surprises the secrets of Nature, observing her economies of matter and her recklessness of man. But, in regard to these hapless contemporaries to whom the stern stepmother shows so little pity, he infers the duty of help, urging the indulgence of a brother orphan :

"Do thou beware no human heart to wring, Let no one feel thine anger hotly sting.

Wouldst thou enjoy perpetual happiness? Know how to suffer: cause no suffering."

Here the veil shall fall, and our last glimpse of the poet show him in a posture of pity. He was summoned to Merv and employed in the reform of the Calendar; and he died a natural death about 1123 at Naishapoor, his old age being untroubled and his life unabridged. More than this an Oriental of that time could not hope from Fate. The rest of his happiness must come from within, as we will hope it did. One of his disciples

tells us that Omar said in his old age: "I would be buried in such a place, that the north wind may scatter roses on it." After the poet's death the disciple visiting the grave, found that it was beneath a garden wall, "and the fruit trees reached their boughs over, and dropped their blossoms over his tomb, so that it was almost hidden."

One of the curious features of Khayyam's life and labour is the fact of such heterodox and seemingly unprofitable matter surviving, with no aid from the printing-press, through the havoc of seven stormy centuries. Of this we may be sure, that no nation preserves a work of literary art unless it has endeared itself to many minds, and found an echo in the popular feeling. Not only have Persia and Khorassan been scourged since then with fire and sword in which the frail life of manuscripts must have been in constant

It is the opinion of scholars that much spurious matter has been added. Out of twelve hundred stanzas ascribed to him, not onefourth is believed to be genuine.

danger, but the outspoken heterodoxy of the rubaiyat must have rendered them especially liable to the hostile pursuit of the Moslem Church. That they have, trifles as we may think them, been preserved amid all these dangers to furnish themes of enjoyment and of discussion in a state of society so unlike that in which they were born, and in which they lived so long, raises them to a position of almost scriptural dignity. And at last we behold them inspiring modern artists in the busiest centres of Western life.

It is not at all likely that in their original amorphous state they would have pleased the generality of English readers. Mr. Whinfield has prefixed

to his translation this somewhat disparaging motto from Mr. Arnold :

"A mind

Not wholly clear nor wholly blind,
Too keen to rest, too weak to find."

Modern Europeans do not care to be troubled with reading "that travails sore and brings forth wind." For the use of such it is more than probable that Fitzgerald's genius and skill have raised the only acceptable structure. Nevertheless, a sympathetic student of human history may be willing a glance at the remote original, too far away in place and time, too bare and for open permanent sojourn a grotesque nook abounding in quaint arabesque and coloured fret-work, yet not the less a shrine of undogmatic grace and harmlessness and peace.

to cast

H. G. KEENE,

383

THE STORY OF ALICE AYRES.

Ῥῆμα δ' ἐργμάτων χρονιώτερον βιοτεύει. PINDAR, Nemea, Od. iv. 10.

[IN an eloquent and interesting letter addressed to The Times of September 5th, 1887, Mr. G. F. Watts recalls to our minds the fine story of Alice Ayres, a maid of all work, who, in April 1885, sacrificed her own life in order to save the children of her master from being burnt to death. The details of this story, as gathered from the letter, I have endeavoured to reproduce below. Mr. Watts, in commenting upon this heroic action, remarks with great force and truth, "that the material prosperity of a nation is not an abiding possession, but its deeds are." "The character of a nation as a people of great deeds is one, it appears to me, that never should be lost sight of;" and he wishes to dignify, as it were, the jubilee-year "by erecting a monument, say here, in London, to the names of those likely-to-be-forgotten heroes." With this wish of his, natural to an eminent artist, I sympathise in some degree, but not entirely. As a writer of verses another point of view opens itself before me, and this point I have tried to show in the following lines.]

We see how wretched are the parts
Played by misleaders of the state,
And feel within our echoing hearts
The step of an advancing Fate.
Yes! England's sun may set, alas!
May set in gloom, nor rise agen,
Her proud name, like a shadow, pass
Out of the thoughts and words of men.

Still there is much not born to die :
Great deeds can never be undone :
Their splendour yet must fill our sky
Like stars, outlasting even the sun.
Ten thousand years may come and go,

But not to move them from their place :
Through them new lands will learn and know
Why God once shaped the English race.

Our childrens' children shall repeat
How, with a half unconscious thrill,

The noble pulse of duty beat

In simple hearts, and armed the will.
We who yet love dear England well,

Must rise and link our lot with theirs,
Perchance still living on to tell

Of those who died-like Alice Ayres.
No. 337.-VOL. LVII.

D

Such deeds are England's soul, and we,
Tossing aside each idler rhyme,
Should pour forth song, to keep them free
From the concealing dust of Time.
No tricks of style will this require:

Such stories should be plainly told:
Gems never lose their strength or fire,
Though tinsel settings may grow old.

The heavens are clear and calm, when lo,
A sudden voice rings through the night:
Men gather, hurrying to and fro,

With quivering lips and faces white:
A small mean house bursts forth in flame:
Within crash down the burning stairs;
And, like a picture in her frame,

Stands at the window Alice Ayres.

"Come down, come down," all cry aloud,

"We have the means to break your fall."
She does not seem to hear the crowd,
And gives no answer to their call.
Then, firm that evil hour to meet,

She forces, through the narrow pane,
Soft clothes and bedding on the street,
Retires, and straight returns again.

A sleeping babe is in her arms,
Whom, with a watchful hand and head,
Protecting from all risks and harms,
She drops in safety on the bed.
Slowly she steps back, in that gloom
Of strangling smoke to disappear,
Thence dragging from her instant doom
An older girl, who shrieks with fear.

"Come down, come down," the shouts rise high, "Come down, or every hope is gone:

Save, save yourself at length," they cry,

66

'Enough for others have you done.'

But no! there is a third one yet:

Death therefore must be faced once more:

The star of duty will not set

For her till the whole work is o'er.

All ended now-she might have time
Upon herself a look to cast;

But filled with that one thought sublime,-
God wills that it should be her last.

With feet astray and reeling brain,

Choked breath, dulled ears, and darkened eyes,

She staggers onwards, but in vain :

It is too late-she falls and dies!

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