Page:The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Volume 08.djvu/84



Your course annoys me, O ye wheeling skies!

Unloose me from your chain of tyrannies!

If none but fools your favors may enjoy,

Then favor me---I am not very wise!

O City Mufti, you go more astray

Than I do, though to wine I do give way;

I drink the blood of grapes, you that of men:

Which of us is the more bloodthirsty, pray?

'Tis well to drink, and leave anxiety

For what is past, and what is yet to be;

Our prisoned spirits, lent us for a day,

A while from season's bondage shall go free!

When Khayyam quittance at Death's hand receives,

And sheds his outworn life, as trees their leaves,

Full gladly will he sift this world away,

'Ere dustmen sift his ashes in their sieves.

This wheel of heaven, which makes us all afraid,

I liken to a lamp's revolving shade,

The sun the candlestick, the earth the shade,

And men the trembling forms thereon portrayed.

Who was it that did mix my clay? Not I.

Who spun my web of silk and wool? Not I.

Who wrote upon my forehead all my good,

And all my evil deeds? In truth not I.