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To Omar Khayyam
To Omar Khayyam
Omar, within thy scented garden-close,When passed with eventideThe starward incense of the waning rose—Too fair and dear and precious to abideAfter the glad and golden death of spring—Omar, thou heardest then,Above the world of men,The mournful rumor of an iron wing,The sough and sigh of desolating years,Whereof the wind is as the winds that blowOut of a lonesome land of night and snow,Where ancient winter weeps with frozen tears;And in thy bodeful ears,The brief and tiny lispOf petals curled and crisp,Fallen at eve in Persia's mellow clime,Was mingled with the mighty sound of time.
Omar, thou knewest wellHow the fair days are sorrowful and strangeWith time's inexorable mysteryAnd terror ineluctable of change:Upon thine eyes the bleak and bitter spellOf vision, thou didst see,As in a magic glass,The moulded mists and painted shadows pass—The ghostly pomps we name reality.And, lo, the level field,With broken fane and throne,And dust of old, unfabled cities sown,In unremembering years was made to yield,From out the shards of Pow'r,The pillars frail and smallThat lift for capitalThe blood-like bubble of the poppy-flow'r;And crowns were crumbled for the airy gold
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