Edward FitzGerald

A republishing of FitzGerald's 1st, 2nd, "variations in the third," and 5th versions.

LONGFELLOW The Day Is Done The Children's Hour Paul Revere's Ride SWINBURNE AChild's Laughter BLAKE The Lamb The Tiger STEVENSON Happy Thought Whole Duty of Children Good and Bad Children My Shadow The Land of Counterpane EMERSON Concord Hymn WHITMAN OCaptain! My captain! There Was a Child Went Forth WHITTIER Barbara Frietchie HOLMES The Deacon's Masterpiece FIELD Little Boy Blue LEAR The Owl and the Pussy-Cat COLERIDGE CARROLL Jabberwocky KIPLING The Law of the Jungle The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains (rubāʿiyāt) attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dubbed "the Astronomer-Poet of Persia". Although commercially unsuccessful at first, FitzGerald's work was popularised from 1861 onward by Whitley Stokes, and the work came to be greatly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites in England. FitzGerald had a third edition printed in 1872, which increased interest in the work in the United States. By the 1880s, the book was extremely popular throughout the English-speaking world, to the extent that numerous "Omar Khayyam clubs" were formed and there was a "fin de siècle cult of the Rubaiyat". The authenticity of the poetry attributed to Omar Khayyam is highly uncertain. Khayyam was famous during his lifetime not as a poet but as an astronomer and mathematician. The earliest reference to his having written poetry is found in his biography by al-Isfahani, written 43 years after his death. This view is reinforced by other medieval historians such as Shahrazuri (1201) and Al-Qifti (1255). Parts of the Rubaiyat appear as incidental quotations from Omar in early works of biography and in anthologies. excerpted from Wikipedia