From some newly-discovered verses of Omar Khayyam (Miss J. Kilmer's translation, New York Evening Times) we quote:

"And wherefore then should you and I be sad

Because to life no minute we can add? ...
So drink! For this blue sullen vault of sky
Hates our white souls and waits to watch us die.
Rest on the soft green grass, my love, for soon
We shall be dust together, you and I."

In

Dr. Oliver Codrington kindly tells me that FitzGerald's English translation imparts to the verses of the Rubaiyat a deeper "Epicurean" tinge than they in reality possess. Omar was certainly familiar with Greek literature. a contribution to the Royal Asiatic Society Journal (London, 1898, p. 349), to which Dr. Codrington has referred me, Dr. E. D. Ross quotes (p. 354) the following passage from Ibn-al-Kifty, who wrote in the seventh century of the Hejira : Omar was "the most learned man of his day, and was versed in the science of the Greeks. He encouraged the search after the One Judge by means of the purification of the inclinations of the flesh for the sake of the elevation of the human soul." It seems to me that a learned man with a Faust-like imagination is certain to have "Epicurean moods at some period or other of his life, and such moods (frequently revealing a shade also of pessimism) may be the only ones well expressed by him in poetry.

More justifiable advice of the kind occurs in the "Shih Ching," the classic of Chinese poetry. As an example one may take the "Carpe diem" poem, which ends:

"Think-all-destroying death comes creeping near,

When our most cherished goods, our hoarded stores, Shall be the stranger's, who shall take our gear,

Shall spend our riches, and shall tread our floors." 37

37 The Book of Chinese Poetry, being the Shih Ching, metrically translated by C. F. R. Allen, London, 1891, pp. 145–146.

The sentence in the Apocrypha, "Let us crown ourselves with rose-buds before they be withered " (Wisdom of Solomon, ch. ii. 8), perhaps suggested the beautiful lines of R. Herrick (1591-1674) :

"Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,

And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying." 38

"The glorious lamp of heaven, the Sun,
The higher he's a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

The neerer he's to setting."

The sun's course from east to west doubtless gave rise to the phrase "going west," signifying dying. Cf. the letter by I. Gollancz, in The Times, London, January 8th, 1915, p. 9. The life of man has often been compared to the sun in its daily course, with its gradual rise, its meridian height, and its setting, but the setting of man's life has the appearance of a final exit. (Carm., v. 4):

"Soles occidere et redire possunt:
Nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetua una dormienda."

Cf. Catullus

38 Cf. Spenser's Faërie Queene, Book ii., Canto 12, st. 75:-
"Gather the rose of love whilest yet is time."

Herrick's above-quoted advice "To the Virgins to make much of Time," may be compared and contrasted with the following translation (given in E. W. Peattie's Poems You Ought to Know, 1903, p. 143) from " The Rose," by the French poet, Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585):

"Ah, my Mignonne, trust to me;

While your youth as yet is seen
In its freshest, fairest green,

Seize the moments to enjoy ;
Old age hastens to destroy

Roses, beauty, youth, and thee."

An anonymous epigram in the Greek Anthology (Anth. Graec. Palat., xi. 51) commences: "Take advantage of your season; all things soon decline." Many others may be compared (ibid., xi. 53, &c.).

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An epigram by Palladas (Anthol. Graec. Palat., x. 78), translated by W. R. Paton (Loeb Classical Library), commences as follows: "Cast away complaint and be not troubled, for how brief is the time thou dwellest here compared with all the life that follows this!"

One writer in Notes and Queries quotes the analogous English:

Enjoy your life, my brother,

Is grey old Reason's song;

One has so little time to live,
And one is dead so long."

Another has heard of a similar inscription over a cottage in Scotland:

"Be happy whilst ye're leevin,

For ye're a lang time deid."

Two of J. F. Davidson's "Anacreontics" (in both of which death is referred to) begin respectively:

A curious" Anacreontic" song, quoted by Isaac D'Israeli, in his Curiosities of Literature (1791), was written by William Oldys (1696-1761). The song is

"on a fly drinking out of a cup of ale":

Thine's a summer, mine no more,
Though repeated to threescore !

Threescore summers when they're gone,

Will appear as short as one.'

It is also given by H. P. Dodd (Epigrammatists, London, 1870, pp. 353-354), who, in the same connexion, quotes

40 J. F. Davidson, The Anacreontea, London, 1915, pp. 194, 195.

So Torquato Tasso (Aminta, Act i., Scene 2):

"Amiam, che 'l Sol si muove, e poi rinasce,
A noi sua breve luce

S'asconde, e 'l sonno eterna notte adduce";

and Samuel Daniel (1562-1619):

"Let's love, the sun doth set and rise again;
But when as our short light

" 39

Comes once to set, it makes eternal night."
Herrick also compared the life of man to a watch:-
"Man is a watch, wound up at first, but never
Wound up again: once down, he's down for ever.
The watch once downe, all motions then do cease;
And man's pulse stopt, all passions cease in peace."

Sir G. M. Humphry (Old Age, Cambridge, 1889, p. 54) likewise, from his point of view, compared human life to a watch that has been wound up for a longer or shorter run. "No one," he wrote, "can make his family history better than it is, or make his body to be wound up for a longer period than its normal life's span; but it is the duty of each to endeavour to make it cover that span and to go as long as its appointed time."

The following lines, which somewhat remind one of a Greek epigram by Antiphanes of Macedonia (Anthol. Graec. Palat., x. 100), are by the Spanish poet, Garcilasso de la Vega (1539-1616), as translated by Felicia Dorothea Hemans:

"Enjoy the sweets of life's luxuriant May,

Ere envious age is hastening on his way

With snowy wreaths to crown the beauteous brow:
The rose will fade when storms assail the year,
And Time, who changeth not his swift career,
Constant in this, will change all else below!"

Very similar are the words of the German popular song (Johann Martin Usteri, 1793):

"Freut euch des Lebens,

Weil noch das Lämpchen glüht;
Pflücket die Rose,

Eh sie verblüht."

39 Cf. Sir Sidney Lee's Annual Shakespeare Lecture, 1915.