Page:Quatrains of Omar Khayyam (tr. Whinfield, 1883).djvu/284

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We make the wine-jar's lip our place of prayer, And drink in lessons of true manhood there, And pass our lives in taverns, if perchance The time misspent in mosques we may repair.

Man is the whole creation's summary, The precious apple of great wisdom's eye; The circle of existence is a ring, Whereof the signet is humanity.

With fancies, as with wine, our heads we turn. Aspire to heaven, and earth's low trammels spurn; But, when we drop this fleshly clog, 'tis seen From dust we came, and back to dust return.