Rubaiyat

Whoever holds the tips of your hair in their hand has no more need of perfume, and is free of musk. A wise man never compares your hair to musk; he knows there is a difference between the two.

Ever since love for you settled in my restless heart, and my eyes fell on those intoxicating flower-like eyes of yours, this sorrow will not set foot outside my heart, and these tears will not let go of the hem of my robe.

Your face is what the sun worshippers seek; the arch of your brow is the whole world's altar. Your mouth is all the joy the poor and broken have; your hair holds the loose threads of every scattered heart.

I called on my reason; it said, 'I stand bewildered before you.' I called on my soul; it said, 'I am the one who dies for you.' I called on my heart; it said, 'That madman? He's chained up in the tangle of your scattered hair.'

A lifetime without wine and the one who pours it is just filler; without the murmur of the Iraqi reed-flute, it is empty. However closely I study the sum total of this world, the only thing that stands out is joy; the rest is filler.

This world is not our home, not a place to settle down. For the wise, it's better to live here ruined and drunk. Pour a little wine on the fire of your grief, before you go down into the dust with empty hands.

Tonight it was just me, a harp player, and a lively lover; we gave ourselves to pleasure and swore a firm vow together. The cupbearer poured pure wine from crystal onto the ground: red agate spilled out, and fresh pearls sprang up in its place.

Strive so that the wise and clear-sighted count you as one of their own, yet the world of hidden secrets keeps no record of you. If you do good, they will call you an angel; if you give in to human appetites, they will call you merely human.

Though every weary heart carries plenty of its own pain, and fate has snapped plenty of threads apart, be careful: don't let a tangled situation crush your spirit, for in the book of the unseen there are plenty of sealed secrets.

The rose is left ashamed before her face; only its sweet fragrance faintly resembles her. When the full moon rises on the fourteenth night, it is not her, yet it comes close to looking like her.

This candle laughing at night among the gathering is like a flower laughing in the meadow. Every night it comes to my bedside until dawn: it burns, and it laughs at my weeping.

Yes, paradise has a hundred blessings: roast fowl, wine, and slender, lovely maidens. But cupbearer, pour me this rose colored wine now, in hand, for its heavenly version is a promise that only pays out on Judgment Day.

Since my love left, my patience fled from me, and from every eyelash a thousand drops of blood-tinged tears fell. It seems I will never see her again; 'may anyone who cannot see go blind.'

The sun is just a spark from the light of your face; grief for you has turned my cheeks pale and my hair white. Everyone in the whole world took their share of being with you, and all I was left with, weary as I am, is hope.

A thought that flows through a fluent mind is explained by more than rhetoric and meaning. Why isn't your poetry delicate and sweet? After all, doesn't it pass across those lips and that mouth?

That lock of hair resting on the collar's edge branded a hundred wounds of cruelty on the hearts of lovers. When the moon saw the arch of her brow above her face, it set its own beauty aside and gave up the claim.

When the beggar drinks the wine, he rises to a prince; and should a little fox drink it, he grows into a lion. If an old man drinks, he takes up youth again; and if a young man drinks, he arrives at the wisdom of age.

I can't give up pure wine, I can't tear down my own wine cellar. If I go one day without a clear cup, for ten nights the craving keeps me from sleep.

Drink the thing that strengthens the soul: rose-red wine that opens the heart to grace. I am the servant of the one who drinks it at nightfall, and the slave of the one who takes more of it at dawn.

My soul keeps telling the story of that eloquent, moon like face, and my heart looks to those charming lips for all its longing. If the reflection of that face ever fell upon the meadow, wild tulips would spring up from every patch of earth.

Your love will grind me down into the dust of the road; the beauty mark on your face will wreck the state I'm in. Your hair will scatter me to the wind; your eyes will leave my house in darkness.

From the moment they shaped me and gave me form, they threw me down to be trampled under the weight of grief. It seems that they made me, pale-faced and heartburned, like a candle, made only to burn.

If your embrace takes my restless hand in its own, and this pain and separation flee into the wild, then my whole state grows well again from your face, and my fortune rises tall, like your graceful height.

Whoever sets his lips on that joyful ruby mouth plants his foot above the nine thrones of the heavens. The sun, like the moon, out of respect before that face, lays its brow upon the dust twice each day.

From sheer poverty and the grip of hardship, in our tent you'll find no sleep and no food. In our pan and platter, our bowl and jug, there's nothing rich, nothing sweet, nothing warm, nothing cold.