Let one seek this, another that; let this man glory in this
thing, another in that, and be praised a thousand thousand times:
but thou, for thy part, rejoice neither in this nor in that, but in
the contempt of thyself, and in My good pleasure and honor
alone.
thing, another in that, and be praised a thousand thousand times:
but thou, for thy part, rejoice neither in this nor in that, but in
the contempt of thyself, and in My good pleasure and honor
alone.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v15 - Kab to Les
Of
the making of books, of the love for them, and of the joy a good
book gives to the children of the world, Thomas knew the full glory.
Kempen, rustic village not many miles northwest of Düsseldorf
in Rhenish Prussia, was so named in old time from the fatness of
the country, the campus. The parents of Thomas were very humble
working-people of this place; and the family name of Hämmerken
is attributed to the father's probable position as a worker in metal.
Thomas Hämmerken, sometimes called Haemmerlein, or in Latin
Malleolus, the little hammer," was born to John and Gertrude in
1380, and was carefully schooled in virtue, patience, and poverty under
their low roof-tree; until at the age of thirteen he was, according to
the custom of the time, sent to try his way to a religious life. His
brother John, fifteen years older, had made the name À Kempis a dis-
tinguished one amongst the Brothers of the Common Life,” a house
of Augustinian Canons Regular at Deventer in Overyssel, lower Neth-
erlands. The chivalry of the lowly in those ages of faith expressed
.
itself with gracious hospitality to all “poor scholars”; and we may
be sure the boy who walked the long road down to the brink of
the Zuyder Zee met no stint of God-speeds from the country folk.
But brother John had gone from Deventer to join Gerard Groot at
Windesheim, so away trudged the sturdy little wayfarer to the new
journey's end. Fondly welcomed there, he took a letter from John to
Florentius at Deventer. Under the wise direction of this great man
the little À Kempis entered the public school, then under the rector-
ship of John Boheme. While studying there the usual course of read-
ing, writing, music, Latin, catechism, and Bible history, Thomas lived
at the house of a pious lady, Zedera, widow of a knight, John of
Runen.
From about 1393-4 Thomas continued in the work of ordinary
school life under the care of Florentius, who was the most dear
»
XV-534
## p. 8530 (#138) ###########################################
8530
THOMAS À KEMPIS
ad been ele
wire aid in
is actos
Pesand.
4,2 br Pu
Kempis dit
ad conies
L 1431
(
miks, 127
TERS a
The bi
Gregor
ak of Pi
Tas Tas
stored
magine
the gitt
friend and associate of brother John. In the mean time John à Kem-
pis had been made the first prior of the new convent or monastery
of Mount St. Agnes near Zwolle, the famous Agnetenberg, to be
forever so for the life work of the rosy-cheeked schoolboy of Deven-
ter. Zutphen, the death place of Sir Philip Sidney, is near by the
schoolhouse of À Kempis. Thomas went to his brother at Mount
St. Agnes in 1399, and entered upon preparation for the life of a
monk of that house and rule. In addition to their priestly teaching
and monastic duties, the Brothers of the Common Life) were famous
bookmakers. The beautiful manuscripts which with such devout
care and worshipful art they slowly perfected with pen and brush, in
the clean and wholesome scriptorium, are gems of wonderful delight
in the great treasure-houses of such priceless things to us and ages
of men. John à Kempis was a worthy master of his brother. They
brought with them from the little smithy in Kempen a good endow-
ment of hand cunning. The prior was a fine miniature-maker, as
well as
an expert in the work of producing the perfectly written
books for which the monastery was growing well renowned. Thomas
soon became, and remained to the end of his life in spite of age, an
expert calligrapher. He was invested with the habit of the order
and admitted to the priesthood at the age of thirty-four, in 1414.
They did not do things in a hurry, those foregoers of our father
Knickerbocker. Thomas began to write his first missal in the year
after his ordination, and is said to have finished it in 1417. The first
missal! What years of slow and patient practice upon lesser works
there must have been ! Ripe in mind and full of holy thought,
Thomas, it is believed, began the Imitation either just before or
soon after his entry into the priesthood. The execution of this mar-
velous booklet,” as it was called by its first readers, engaged about
ten years.
It was produced as a series of instructive meditations,
given out from time to time to the brothers of the order. For
that reason its four books are divided, yet dependent upon each
other. At this time, and probably while engaged upon the Imita-
tion,' he wrote the Little Alphabet of the Monk in the School of
Christ) after Psalm cxix. This curious and somewhat droll work is
sometimes called the (Saint's Alphabet. '
The quiet of the teachers and book-writers at Agnetenberg was
rudely broken by an angry quarrel between the people of Overyssel
and the hierarchy. The country was laid under an interdict for
refusing to accept Zweder de Colenborgh as bishop appointed to the
see of Utrecht by Pope Martin V. This dire trouble, which began in
1425, culminated in 1429 by the closing of the churches in the banned
district. The monastery of St. Agnes, for obeying the order to
withdraw its religious ministrations from the people, was obliged to
take its people out of the disturbed and enraged province. Thomas
from to
graphe
at Bras
teks
La
within
lect
tien
a
## p. 8531 (#139) ###########################################
THOMAS À KEMPIS
8531
an
had been elected sub-prior just before this event and he was
active aid in the guidance, on St. Barnabas's day 1429, of the unhoused
monks across the Zuyder Zee to the brother house of Lunenkirk in
Friesland. Here the brothers lived until the interdict was raised in
1432 by Pope Eugenius IV. It was during this exile that John à
Kempis died. He had gone from the Agnetenberg to become rector
and confessor of the convent of Bethany near Arnheim, and being
ill in 1431 Thomas went to him. The two were together for fourteen
months, until November 4th, 1432, when the loving elder brother
went a little before through the gateway of Death.
The bitter schism which had tormented the Church since the death
of Gregory XI. in 1378, which had survived in rancor the great Coun-
cils of Pisa and of Constance, and the horror of the long Bohemian
war, was for a time thought to be ended by the same tribunal which
restored the monks of St. Agnes to their own house. One may easily
imagine therefore that their home-coming was a special occasion of
joy; a joy unfortunately not to last. That exemplary evidence against
the pretenders who have taken occasion from his humility to filch
from the monk of St. Agnes the merit of his best work, the 1441 auto-
graph manuscript of the Imitation, now in the Burgundian Library
at Brussels, may well have been begun by Thomas as an offering of
thanksgiving for the restored peace of God.
In 1447 the brothers made Thomas their sub-prior for the second
time. From the return to Mount St. Agnes until his death in 1471,
within the last decade of a century of well-spent life, the days of
À Kempis were without event beyond the routine of his teaching,
writing, and priestly toil. Like all the brothers he worked to the
last moment of physical endurance, and it is said of him that so per-
fect were his physical faculties that he never needed spectacles for
even the most delicate pen tracing.
A portrait is extant which represents him dressed in the habit of
the Augustinians, and seated upon a rocky ledge amidst the quiet of
a Dutch landscape. An open book is in his hand, another at his
feet, with the words in the country's speech, «In een hoecken mit
een boecken. ” This painting, now known as the Gertruidenberg por-
trait, was found in the abbey of St. Agnes by Franz von Tholen,
about one hundred years after the death of À Kempis. It represents
a stout, large-browed man of medium size, of Flemish features, with
lustrous, far-away-looking, kindly eyes.
Of his death Adrian de But, in his chronicle, says under the year
1471:-
(
"In this year died Brother Thomas à Kempis of Mount St. Agnes, a
professor of the Order of Canons Regular, who published many writings, and
composed in rhythm that book on the text (Who followeth Me. ) »
## p. 8532 (#140) ###########################################
8532
THOMAS À KEMPIS
na 'The
The controversy about the authorship of the Imitation is like
that about the works of Shakespeare. Its primary cause is the un-
assuming greatness of the writer, and his honesty to his rule of life.
The fuel upon which it feeds is the incapacity of little-minded men
to think of any world beyond the horizon which corrals the human
herd. Volumes have been written in this curious phase of vicarious
plagiarism; but the plain tale of contemporary testimony, and the
undoubted autographs of À Kempis himself, put them outside the
bars of evidence.
The language of À Kempis is the Latin of his day, an interesting
witness in the growth of modern tongues. It is not classical, but
smacks strongly of the land and of the people. The knowledge of
the Latin speech was far more common in the fourteenth, fifteenth,
and sixteenth centuries than is generally supposed. All people not
utterly ignorant had a speaking knowledge of it, and filled the cur-
rent of conversation with crude translations of their common saws.
À Kempis is full of the vigor of this growth of new speech. It must
have seemed strange to the stickler for classic latinity at the court
of Elizabeth to hear Launcelot Gobbo quoting from the Imitation':
“Laun. — The old proverb is very well parted between my master
Shylock and you, sir: you have the grace of God, sir, and he hath
enough. ” — Merchant of Venice,' Act ii. , scene 2.
All good books paid their tribute to the mind of À Kempis. His
favorites were, first of course the Scriptures, then St. Bernard, St.
Gregory the Great, St. Ambrose, and St. Thomas. Aristotle, Ovid,
Seneca, and Dante furnished him from time to time with apt illustra-
tions of his thought. A recent writer has well summed up in one
happy phrase the sense of Brother Thomas's methods and purpose,
by the name “A minnesinger of the love of God. ” The miscalled
mysticism of Thomas is the poesy of a love which disdains all lesser
objects and fixes itself to the person of God himself. There is no
abstruse life problem in such a bent of soul. The aspiration towards
the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, which well sung wins the
poet's bay wreath, stays not the willingness of men's ears.
The smaller works of À Kempis are -The Soliloquy of the Soul,'
(Solitude and Silence,' 'The Little Garden of Roses,' 'The Valley
of Lilies,' and a number of similar essays. He wrote also some
sweet church hymns, and three books of the Lives of the Canons)
and the Chronicle of St. Agnes. The first edition of his works was
published at Nuremberg by George Pirkheimer, in 1494.
(
Jacallelone
## p. 8533 (#141) ###########################################
THOMAS Å KEMPIS
8533
ON THE JOYS OF HEAVEN
From “The Voice of Christian Life in Song: or, Hymns and Hymn-Writers
of Many Lands and Ages)
H
Igh the angel choirs are raising
Heart and voice in harmony;
The Creator King still praising,
Whom in beauty there they see.
Sweetest strains, from soft harps stealing;
Trumpets, notes of triumph pealing;
Radiant wings and white stoles gleaming,
Up the steps of glory streaming;
Where the heavenly bells are ringing,
Holy, holy, holy! singing
To the mighty Trinity!
Ioly, holy, holy! crying;
For all earthly care and sighing
In that city cease to be!
Every voice is there harmonious,
Praising God in hymns symphonious;
Love each heart with light enfolding
As they stand in peace beholding
There the Triune Deity!
Whom adore the seraphim,
Aye with love eternal burning;
Venerate the cherubim,
To their fount of honor turning;
Whilst angelic thrones adoring
Gaze upon His majesty.
Oh how beautiful that region,
And how fair that heavenly legion,
Where thus men and angels blend!
Glorious will that city be,
Full of deep tranquillity,
Light and peace from end to end!
All the happy dwellers there
Shine in robes of purity,
Keep the law of charity,
Bound in firmest unity;
Labor finds them not, nor care.
## p. 8534 (#142) ###########################################
8534
THOMAS À KEMPIS
OF THE
Ignorance can ne'er perplex,
Nothing tempt them, nothing vex;
Joy and health their fadeless blessing,
Always all things good possessing.
BLESS thee,
ON CHRISTIAN PATIENCE
because t
wretch as
O Father
bee, who ar
De who am
I bless ti
From "Hymns and Poems)
Adversa mundi tolera
begitter So-
Fºk
Come th
OR Christ's dear sake with courage bear
Whatever ills betide;
Prosperity is oft a snare,
And puffs the heart with pride.
shal: come
PT.
Thou a
Thou a
What seemed thy loss will often prove
To be thy truest gain;
And sufferings borne with patient love
A jeweled crown obtain.
.
tion,
But be
therefore
is thee.
By this thou wilt the angels please,
Wilt glorify the Lord,
Thy neighbor's faith and hope increase,
And earn a rich reward.
or all ho
Free
Gigate 2
Ceansed
Tersere
Brief is this life, and brief its pain,
But long the bliss to come;
Trials endured for Christ attain
A place with martyrdom.
Lor
makes
laat is
The Christian soul by patience grows
More perfect day by day;
And brighter still, and brighter glows
With heaven's eternal ray;
makes
TH
To Christ becomes inore lovable,
More like the Saints on high;
Dear to the good; invincible
Against the Enemy.
1
،
1
aita
te
Do
## p. 8535 (#143) ###########################################
THOMAS À KEMPIS
8535
OF THE WONDERFUL EFFECT OF DIVINE LOVE
From the Imitation of Christ)
I
Bless thee, heavenly Father, Father of my Lord Jesus Christ,
because thou hast vouchsafed to be mindful of so poor a
wretch as I.
O Father of mercies and God of all comfort, I give thanks to
thee, who art sometimes pleased to refresh with thy consolation
me who am unworthy of any consolation.
I bless thee and glorify thee evermore, together with thy only
begotten Son and the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, to all eternity.
Come then, Lord God, holy one that lovest me! for when thou
shalt come into my heart, all that is within me will leap with
joy.
Thou art my glory and the rejoicing of my heart.
Thou art my hope and my refuge in the day of my tribula-
tion.
But because I am as yet weak in love and imperfect in virtue,
therefore do I stand in need of being strengthened and comforted
by thee. Wherefore visit me again and again; and instruct me
by all holy discipline.
Free me from evil passions and heal my heart of all inor-
dinate affections; that being inwardly healed and thoroughly
;
cleansed, I may become fit to love, strong to suffer, constant to
persevere.
Love is a great thing, a great good indeed, which alone
makes light all that is burdensome, and bears with even mind all
that is uneven.
For it carries a burthen without being burthened; and it
makes all that which is bitter sweet and savory.
The love of Jesus is noble, and spurs us on to do great things,
and excites us to desire always things more perfect.
Love desires to have its abode above, and not to be kept back
by things below.
Love desires to be at liberty and estranged from all worldly
affection, lest its inner view be hindered, lest it suffer itself to
be entangled through some temporal interest, or give way through
mishap.
Nothing is sweeter than love; nothing stronger, nothing higher,
nothing broader, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller or better
## p. 8536 (#144) ###########################################
8536
THOMAS À KEMPIS
Lore is
temptible is
Gex: alway
the relish
TILVPa
snedt
He w
OF THE
TE
VIN,
S
1. th
beart, a
in heaven and in earth; for love is born of God, and can rest
only in God above all things created.
The lover flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and not held.
He gives all for all and has all in all, because he rests in One
supreme above all, from whom all good flows and proceeds.
He looks not at the gifts, but turns himself above all goods
to the Giver.
Love often knows no measure, but warmly glows above all
measure.
Love feels no burthen, regards not labors, would willingly
do more than it is able, pleads not impossibility, because it feels
sure that it can and may do all things.
It is able therefore to do all things; and it makes good many
deficiencies, and frees many things for being carried out, where
he who loves not faints and lies down.
Love watches, and sleeping, slumbers not; weary, is not tired;
straitened, is not constrained; frightened, is not disturbed; but
like a living flame and a burning torch, it bursts forth upwards
and safely overpasses all.
Whosoever loves knows the cry of this voice.
A loud cry in the ears of God is that ardent affection of the
soul which says, My God, my love, thou art all mine and I am
all thine.
Enlarge me in thy love, that I may learn to taste with the
inner mouth of the heart how sweet it is to love, and to be dis-
solved and swim in a sea of love.
Let me be possessed by love, going above myself through
excess of fervor and awe.
Let me sing the song of love; let me follow thee, my beloved,
on high; let my soul lose herself in thy praises, exulting in
love.
Let me love thee more than myself, and myself only for thee,
and all in thee who truly love thee, as the law of love which
shines forth from thee commands.
Love is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant, and delightful; strong,
patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, manly, and never seek-
ing itself; for where a man seeks himself, there he falls from
love.
Love is circumspect, humble, and upright; not soft, not light,
not intent upon vain things; sober, chaste, steadfast, quiet, and
guarded in all its senses.
Rete
tadletin
VALI V
Fo-
isleis
ai
Tith
2
## p. 8537 (#145) ###########################################
THOMAS À KEMPIS
8537
-
Love is submissive and obedient to superiors; mean and con-
temptible in its own eyes; devout and ever giving thanks to
God; always trusting and hoping in him, even when it tastes not
the relish of God's sweetness,- for there is no living in love
without pain.
Whosoever is not ready to suffer all things, and to stand
resigned to the will of the beloved, is not worthy to be called a
lover.
He who loves must willingly embrace all that is hard and
bitter, for the sake of the beloved.
OF THE DESIRE OF ETERNAL LIFE, AND HOW GREAT ARE
THE BENEFITS PROMISED TO THEM THAT FIGHT
From the Imitation of Christ)
SOM
I.
ON, when thou perceivest the desire of eternal bliss to be in-
fused into thee from above, and thou wouldst fain go out of
the tabernacle of this body, that thou mightest contemplate
My brightness without any shadow of change, - enlarge thy
heart, and receive this holy inspiration with thy whole desire.
Return the greatest thanks to the Supreme Goodness, which
dealeth so condescendingly with thee, mercifully visiteth thee,
ardently inciteth thee, and powerfully raiseth thee up, lest by thy
own weight thou fall down to the things of earth.
For it is not by thy own thoughtfulness or endeavor that thou
receivest this, but by the mere condescension of heavenly grace
and Divine regard; that so thou mayest advance in virtues and
greater humility, and prepare thyself for future conflicts, and labor
with the whole affection of thy heart to keep close to Me, and
serve Me with a fervent will.
2. Son, the fire often burneth, but the flame ascendeth not
without smoke.
And so the desires of some are on fire after heavenly things,
and yet they are not free from the temptation of carnal affection.
Therefore is it not altogether purely for God's honor that
they act, when they so earnestly petition Him.
Such also is oftentimes thy desire, which thou hast professed
to be so importunate.
For that is not pure and perfect which is alloyed with self-
interest.
## p. 8538 (#146) ###########################################
8538
THOMAS À KEMPIS
There
itre
at um
And h
migher
6. Bi
minat
bence des
ܝܐ ܬܐ
Fur ir
Dit for:
Tänst des
There
of 1
There
RUS
3. Ask not that which is pleasant and convenient, but that
which is acceptable to Me and for My honor; for if thou judgest
rightly, thou oughtest to prefer and to follow My appointment
rather than thine own desire or any other desirable thing.
I know thy desire, and I have often heard thy groanings.
Thou wouldst wish to be already in the liberty of the glory
of the children of God.
Now doth the eternal dwelling, and the heavenly country full
of festivity, delight thee.
But that hour is not yet come; for there is yet another time,
a time of war, a time of labor and of probation.
Thou desirest to be filled with the Sovereign Good, but thou
canst not at present attain to it.
I am He: wait for Me, saith the Lord, until the kingdom of
God come.
4. Thou hast yet to be tried upon earth and exercised in
many things.
Consolation shall sometimes be given thee, but abundant
satiety shall not be granted thee.
Take courage, therefore, and be valiant, as well in doing as
in suffering things repugnant to nature,
Thou must put on the new man, and be changed into another
person.
That which thou wouldst not, thou must oftentimes do; and
that which thou wouldst, thou must leave undone.
What pleaseth others shall prosper, what is pleasing to thee
shall not succeed.
What others say shall be hearkened to; what thou sayest shall
be reckoned as naught.
Others shall ask, and shall receive; thou shalt ask, and not
obtain.
5. Others shall be great in the esteem of men; about thee
nothing shall be said.
To others this or that shall be committed; but thou shalt be
accounted as of no use.
At this, nature will sometimes repine, and it will be a great
matter if thou bear it with silence.
In these, and many such-like things, the faithful servant of
the Lord is wont to be tried how far he can deny and break
himself in all things.
umplaint
Tk
faith
etti.
That
CUWIE
Bu
***** 2-3
W
T
## p. 8539 (#147) ###########################################
THOMAS À KEMPIS
8539
There is scarce anything in which thou standest so much in
need of dying to thyself as in seeing and suffering things that
are contrary to thy will, and more especially when those things
are commanded which seem to thee inconvenient and of little use.
And because, being under authority, thou darest not resist the
higher power, therefore it seemeth to thee hard to walk at the
beck of another, and wholly to give up thy own opinion.
6. But consider, son, the fruit of these labors, their speedy
termination, and their reward exceeding great; and thou wilt not
hence derive affliction, but the most strengthening consolation in
thy suffering
For in regard to that little of thy will which thou now will-
ingly forsakest, thou shalt forever have thy will in heaven.
For there thou shalt find all that thou willest, all that thou
canst desire.
There shall be to thee the possession of every good, without
fear of losing it.
There thy will, always one with Me, shall not covet any ex-
traneous or private thing. There no one shall resist thee, no one
complain of thee, no one obstruct thee, nothing shall stand in thy
way; but every desirable good shall be present at the same mo-
ment, shall replenish all thy affections and satiate them to the full.
There I will give thee glory for the contumely thou hast suf-
fered; a garment of praise for thy sorrow; and for having been
seated here in the lowest place, the throne of My kingdom for-
ever.
There will the fruit of obedience appear, there will the labor
of penance rejoice, and humble subjection shall be gloriously
crowned.
Now, therefore, bow thyself down humbly under the hands of
all, and heed not who it was that said or commanded this.
But let it be thy great care, that whether thy superior or
inferior or equal require anything of thee, or hint at anything,
thou take all in good part, and labor with a sincere will to per-
form it.
Let one seek this, another that; let this man glory in this
thing, another in that, and be praised a thousand thousand times:
but thou, for thy part, rejoice neither in this nor in that, but in
the contempt of thyself, and in My good pleasure and honor
alone.
This is what thou hast to wish for, that whether in life or in
death, God may be always glorified in thee.
## p. 8540 (#148) ###########################################
8540
THOMAS À KEMPIS
THAT A MAN SHOULD NOT BE TOO MUCH DEJECTED, EVEN
WHEN HE FALLETH INTO SOME DEFECTS
From the (Imitation of Christ)
M
destrore
Fremt
water i
nach i
Encs
Y son, patience and humility in adversities are more pleasing
to Me, than much comfort and devotion when things go
well.
Why art thou so grieved for every little matter spoken against
thee?
Although it had been much more, thou oughtest not to have
been moved.
But now let it pass: it is not the first that hath happened,
nor is it anything new; neither shall it be the last, if thou live
long
Thou art courageous enough, so long as nothing adverse be-
falleth thee.
Thou canst give good counsel also, and canst strengthen
others with thy words; but when any tribulation suddenly comes
to thy door, thou failest in counsel and in strength.
Observe then thy great frailty, of which thou too often hast
experience in small occurrences.
It is notwithstanding intended for thy good, when these and
such-like trials happen to thee.
Put it out of thy heart the best thou canst; and if tribulation
have touched thee, yet let it not cast thee down nor long per-
plex thee.
Bear it at least patiently, if thou canst not joyfully.
Although thou be unwilling to hear it, and conceivest indig-
nation thereat, yet restrain thyself, and suffer no inordinate word
to pass out of thy mouth, whereby [Christ's] little ones may be
offended.
The storm which is now raised shall quickly be appeased,
and inward grief shall be sweetened by the return of grace.
Be more patient of soul, and gird thyself to greater endur-
sung so
Chartit
che,
10
the
w
tan
ance.
3.
All is not lost, although thou do feel thyself very often
afflicted or grievously tempted.
Thou art a man, and not God; thou art flesh, not an angel.
How canst thou look to continue alway in the same state of
virtue, when an angel in heaven hath fallen, as also the first
man in Paradise ?
## p. 8541 (#149) ###########################################
8541
OMAR KHAYYÁM
1050 (? )-1123 (? )
BY NATHAN HASKELL DOLE
KN A reed-grown marshy plain at the foot of the Elbruz
Mountains stands an ancient city of Khorássán. It existed
before the days of Alexander the Great, who is said to have
destroyed it. It was then rebuilt by Shapúr, for whom it was named.
From the lofty hills, fertile to the very top, twelve thousand streams
water the province, and the river Saka lends its beauty to this city,
which is blessed above others with a pure and temperate climate.
Exquisite fruits and flowers abound. Here bloom the roses,
«With petals closed against the winds' disgrace);
name
fields of tulips droop their heavy heads; the violet and narcissus, the
jessamine and eglantine and lily, of which the Persian poets have
sung so eloquently, scent the air with their perfumes. Here the soft
languorous night has since ages immemorial listened to the amorous
chanting of the bulbul and the monotonous complaint of the ring-
dove, dear to lovers. This city and the villages scattered about in
its vicinity were famous by reason of the poets who there first saw
the light. Nishápúr itself was the birthplace of the great poet and
astronomer Omar, called Khayyam or the Tent-maker. His whole
was Ghias ud-din Abul Fath Omar Ibn Ibrahim al-Khayyám.
The date of his birth is not exactly known; but there is a tradition
that he died in the year 1123 of our era (517 A. H. ), and that he fin-
ished his school education in 1042.
When Omar was a youth, Nishápúr boasted the presence of one
of the greatest and wisest men of Khorássán, “a man highly honored
and reverenced. ” This was the Imám Muaffek, who had the reputa-
tion of being such a perfect teacher that every one who studied the
Koran and the traditions of the prophets under him would assuredly
attain to honor and happiness. ” In his school Omar was instructed
in Mussulman lore, and made the acquaintance of two youths who
equally with himself won the fame promised the Imám's faithful
pupils. One of these was- Nizam ul Mulk, who became Vizier to two
successive Shahs; the other was Hassan Ibn Sabah, afterwards founder
of the Iranian Ismailites, the terrible Shaikh of the Assassins. Nizam
## p. 8542 (#150) ###########################################
8542
OMAR KHAYYÁM
ul Mulk in his Testament (Wasáyá) tells how the friendship of the
three was formed:-
ti betraving
ne posecuted
strs the do
brated there
mat of attend
«Both Omar and Hassan were of the same age as I was, and equally
remarkable for excellence of intelligence and power of intellect. We became
friends, and when we went out from the Imám's class we used to repeat to
one another the lesson we had just heard.
One day that miscreant
Hassan said to us, (It is the general opinion that the disciples of Imám
Muaffik attain to fortune; and no doubt one of us will do so, even though all
What agreement or compact is there now between us? ) I said,
(Whatever you please. ' He answered, "Whichever of us may attain to for-
tune shall share it with the others, and not engross it himself. ' We agreed
to those terms, and a compact was made accordingly. ”
pre opinius
papar be
baie pasked
may not.
It is ext-
him out an
isan auda
inced 02
the introca
He is
ice he
ಸೌದಿ ಇದೆ.
Omar Fico
of Fire
this and
lity as
mpetit
He goes on to tell how after his appointment as Vizier to the
Shah Alp Arslan, Omar Khayyam appeared before him; but instead
of accepting preferment at court he said, “The greatest favor which
you can do me is to let me live in retirement, where under your
protection I may occupy myself in amassing the riches of learning
and in praying for your long life. ”
Accordingly Nizam ul Mulk assigned Omar a yearly pension of
1200 gold miskals and allowed him to retire to his native city, where
he devoted himself especially to the study of mathematics and astron-
omy. On the succession of Malik Shah he was appointed Astronomer
Royal at Merv, in which capacity he compiled some astronomical
tables called Zij-i-Maliksháni. He was one of the eight learned men
employed to revise the ancient Persian calendar; a work comparable
to the reform of the Julian calendar under Pope Gregory XIII. five
centuries later, and by some authorities considered even preferable
to it. There is in existence a work on algebra which Omar compiled,
and a study of The Difficulties of Euclid's Definitions) is preserved
in the Library at Leyden. A Persian biographer who lived at Nishá-
púr, and may have known Omar personally, reflects the general
impression made by the astronomer-poet on his contemporaries:-
tarth, and
par le
To the
Tribe
Coni
«Omar al-Khayyam, Imám of Khorássán, and the greatest scholar of his
time, was versed in all the learning of the Greeks. He was wont to exhort
men to seek the One Author of all by purifying the bodily actions to secure
the sanctification of the soul. He also used to recommend the study of politics
as laid down in Greek authors. The later Sufis have caught at the apparent
sense of part of his poems and accommodated them to their own canon, mak-
ing them a subject of discussion in their assemblies and conventicles, but the
esoteric sense consists in axioms of natural religion and principles of universal
obligation. When the men of his time anathematized his doctrines, and drew
forth his opinions from the concealment in which he had veiled them, he went
in fear of his life, and placed a check on the sallies of his tongue and his
pen. He made the pilgrimage, but it was from accident rather than piety,
## p. 8543 (#151) ###########################################
OMAR KHAYYÁM
8543
still betraying his unorthodox views. On his arrival at Baghdad, the men
who prosecuted the same ancient studies as he, flocked to meet him; but
he shut the door in their faces, as one who had renounced those studies and
cultivated them no longer. On his return to his native city he made a prac-
tice of attending the morning and evening prayers, and of disguising his
private opinions; but for all that they were no secret. In astronomy and in
philosophy he was without a rival, and his eminence in those sciences would
have passed into a proverb had he only possessed self-control. ”
It is extremely probable that Sharastani's account of him — making
him out an arrant hypocrite — was tinged by prejudice. The Epi-
curean audacity of thought” expressed in his poems caused him to be
looked on by his own people with suspicion. Edward Fitzgerald in
the introduction to his translation or paraphrase says:-
«He is said to have been especially hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose
practice he ridiculed, and whose faith amounts to little more than his own
when stript of the mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism under which
Omar would not hide. Their poets, including Hāfiz, who are (with the excep-
tion of Firdausi) the most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely indeed of
Omar's material, but turning it to a mystical use more convenient to them-
selves and the people they addressed, - a people quite as quick of doubt as of
belief; as keen of bodily sense as of intellectual; and delighting in a cloudy
composition of both, in which they could float luxuriously between heaven and
earth, and this world and the next, on the wings of a poetical expression that
might serve indifferently for either. Omar was too honest of heart as well as
of head for this. Having failed (however mistakenly) of finding any Provi-
dence but Destiny, and any world but this, he set about making the most of
it; preferring rather to soothe the soul through the senses into acquiescence
with ings as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain disquietude after
what they might be. ”
Contentedly living in his beautiful city of Nishápúr, where the
roses which he loved so passionately wafted their fragrance across his
terrace, occupied with those lofty questions which come home with
doubly powerful insistence to an astronomer, he looked at the world
with curiously quizzical eyes. Occasionally, as a recreation perhaps,
he would compose an exquisitely perfect little quatrain or Rubái'y,
the conventional form of which called for the first two lines and the
last to rhyme, the rhymes being in many cases triple, quadruple, or
even quintuple. The third line was generally left blank, though there
are instances of the same rhyme occurring in all four lines. Like
the conventional Japanese poems, these Rubáiyát are each entirely
distinct and disconnected. In the manuscripts that have come down
to the present time they are always copied in alphabetical order,
arranged in accordance with the letter that ends the rhyme.
Edward Fitzgerald ingeniously tessellated a selection of these
quatrains into a sort of Persian mosaic, making of them a sort of
loosely connected elegy, and thus gave extraordinary emphasis to one
## p. 8544 (#152) ###########################################
8544
OMAR KHAYYÁM
Esques so far
the light of God
If one
part of Omar Khayyam's many-sided genius. It is safe to say that
Omar himself had no such consistent scheme of pessimism.
may judge at all from the manuscripts, he was a creature of many
varying moods. At one time his audacious impiety is colossal:
a
T
sr
Omar loved
ai confuse.
si opponents
«On that dread day, when wrath shall rend the sky,
And darkness dim the bright stars' galaxy,
I'll seize the Loved One by his skirt, and cry
(Why hast thou doomed these guiltless ones to die ? ) »
At another time he is full of hope; the future life seems to gleam on
his inner sight:-
“Death's terrors spring from baseless fantasy,
Death yields the tree of immortality;
Since 'Isa (Jesus] breathed new life into my soul,
Eternal death has washed its hands of me. "
ictu retort. F
Epicurean? T
tarem beaker
sister of w
alance by
chanted aroun
What was
At another he is a fatalist:-
zary of creat
“When Allah mixt my clay, he knew full well
My future acts, and could each one foretell;
Without his will no act of mine was wrought:
Is it then just to punish me in hell ?
is elected as
di water swa
descent cues
God are 11
hele: be ist
man to a he
:,-for if
pacious; bu
<< 'Twas writ at first, whatever was to be,
By pen unheeding bliss or misery,
Yea, writ upon the tablet once for all:
To murmur or resist is vanity. ”
In his liberality toward other creeds he stands at the very antipodes
of the narrow-minded Muslim of his day, or of ours:-
“Pagodas, just as mosques, are homes of prayer;
'Tis prayer that church-bells chime unto the air:
Yea, Church and Ka'ba, Rosary and Cross,
Are all but divers tongues of world-wide prayer.
no grace is
na sia in ti
so inexorabl
4 What
(c
“Hearts with the light of love illumined well,
Whether in mosque or synagogue they dwell,
Have their names written in the book of love,
Unvext by hopes of heaven or fears of hell.
practical a
“They say, when the last trump shall sound its knell
Our Friend will sternly judge and doom to hell.
Can aught but good from perfect goodness come ?
Compose your trembling hearts, 'twill all be well. ”
Again he paraphrases the words of the Christ:-
“If you seek Him, abandon child and wife,
Arise, and sever all these ties to life:
All these are bonds to check you on your course;
Arise, and cut these bonds as with a knife. )
1-
## p. 8545 (#153) ###########################################
OMAR KHAYYÁM
8545
He goes so far as to say that it is better to be a drunkard and see
the light of God than be in darkness in the sanctuary:
«In taverns better far commune with thee
Than pray in mosques and fail thy face to see!
Oh, first and last of all thy creatures thou;
'Tis thine to burn and thine to cherish me. ”
(
Omar loved to indulge in sophistries and paradoxes; to mystify
and confuse. He delighted in drawing on himself the hatred of his
Sufi opponents, and then teasing them with the flashing wit of his
keen retort. How can one tell whether he was at heart a cynic or an
Epicurean? Was the wine-cup which he exalts in so many stanzas a
tavern beaker, or a symbol of the Divine ? Was the “cypress-slender
minister of wine » an earthly maiden with whom he sported in idle
dalliance by the side of the babbling brook while the nightingales
chanted around, or was the expression a mystic type of the soul ?
What was man in his eyes ? At one moment he was the very sum-
mary of creation, the “bowl of Jamshed” in which the whole universe
is reflected as in a mirror; at another he is a puppet, he is as a drop
of water swallowed up in the vast ocean, a bubble sparkling with iri-
descent hues for a brief instant and then vanishing forever. His ideas
of God are no less contradictory. On the one hand God is approach-
able: he is the friend of man, infinitely merciful, too kind to doom
man to a hell which man has no reason to fear because he is a sin-
ner,- for if he were not a sinner, where would Mercy be ? Allah is
gracious; but if the poor sinner must earn his grace by works, then
no grace is it indeed. But on the other hand, God is responsible for
the sin in the world: God rolls that merciless (wheel of Fate » which
so inexorably crushes the king on his throne and the ant on the ant-
hill. What complaints he utters about that rolling orb!
«The wheel on high, still busied with despite,
Will ne'er unloose a wretch from his sad plight;
But when it lights upon a smitten heart,
Straightway essays another blow to smite.
“Dark wheel! how inany lovers hast thou slain
Like Mabmud and Ayaz, O inhumane!
Come, let us drink! thou grantest not two lives;
When one is spent, we find it not again. ”
The bitter fatalism, worthy of Koheleth, soon translates itself into
practical acceptance of all the good things of earth:-
«In the sweet Spring a grassy bank I sought,
And thither wine and a fair Houri brought;
And though the people called me graceless dog,
Gave not to Paradise another thought.
V-535
## p. 8546 (#154) ###########################################
8546
OMAR KHAYYÁM
«Life void of wine and minstrels with their lutes,
And the soft murmurs of Irakian Autes,
Were nothing worth: I scan the world and see,
Save pleasure, life yields only bitter fruits.
(And now
moment, be sure
zake pilgrima
pendid beare
stems, CONDE
and drop bloc
“O soul! lay up all earthly goods in store;
Thy mead with pleasure's flowerets spangle o'er;
And know 'tis all as dew that decks the Aowers
For one short night, and then is seen no more!
tomated moa
the lament i
s triumphan
Oma: knew
Bat was
«Like tulips in the Spring your cups lift up,
And with a tulip-cheeked companion sup
With joy your wine, or e'er this azure wheel
With some unlooked for blast upset your cup. ”
be paints -
and the ne
form. Orier
mat his mo
The Prophet promises for the Faithful in the Paradise to come,
multiplied joys: feasts of many courses, rivers running with wine and
milk, and exquisite Houris, star-eyed maidens with bodies made of
musk or saffron; but Omar says if those things are to be in the world
to come, then surely it is right to enjoy their counterparts on earth.
He invites us to the tavern, there to forget the sorrows of life; he
comes forth from the tavern to mock at the hypocritical sages who in
reality envy him his freedom.
A recent writer, James A. Murray, in the Fortnightly Review, elo-
quently pictures one phase of Omar's poetry :-
«Behind this joyous life lies the very shadow of death. Omar entreats his
mistress to pour wine for him while she can, before the potters make vessels
from their dust; to love him while the light is in her eyes and the laughter
in her voice. It is the old sorrow for the dead, made personal and thereby
increased in poignancy and pathos. The lion and the lizard haunt the courts
of Jamshed's splendor, the wild ass stamps above the head of Bahram; birds
wail over the skull of Kai Kawus, potters mold upon their wheels the ashes
of Faridun and Kai Khosru. Those delicate lithe curves were once the more
perfect lines of a human body; the glass, the goblet, that one may break in
carelessness, thrills with the anguish of a living creature. In like manner
Omar prays that when he is dead he may be ground to dust, and mingled
into clay with wine, and molded to a stopper for the wine-jar's mouth. For
all men have a regeneration which is sometimes beautiful and sometimes
base. Roses and tulips spring from the dust of monarchs; beneath purple
violets, dark ladies are laid. And still that pitiful refrain continues: of what
avail is it, when men are dead, and do not feel or see or hear? It is the
spirit of a most noble Hellenic epitaph, strangely distant from the Greeks in
its unrestraint: -“We, the dead, are only bones and ashes: waste no precious
ointments or wreaths upon our tomb, for it is only marble; kindle no funeral
pyre, for it is useless extravagance. If you have anything to give, give it
while I am alive; but if you steep ashes in wine you only make mud, for the
dead man does not drink. )
But it
and mot
ad var
ནན
انة بها
mustice
pemas,
either i
3. 1Bit
wondes,
lated to
le temaer
simpic
Ofi
scripts
## p. 8547 (#155) ###########################################
OMAR KHAYYÁM
8547
«And now the dust of Omar, as that of all men, brings forth flowers: (God
knows,' he says, (for whom. ) For whom? To-day travelers from all countries
make pilgrimage to the sepulchre in that soft garden where he rests. The
splendid heaven of Nishápúr is over him; the cool earth embraces him; brown
stems, crowned heavily with white and crimson blossom, rise from his ashes,
and drop blown petals on his tomb. The ringdove murmurs in that low full-
throated moan whose significance is sculptured over the ruins of Persepolis,-
the lament for strong dead men and imperious queens. But the dawn is
as triumphant, the incense-wind as sweet, the gardens flower-laden, as when
Omar knew them more than nine hundred years ago.
But was the grave astronomer the wine-bibber and voluptuary that
he paints himself? Must we not read into his praise of the wine-cup
and the narcissus-eyed Cup-bearer with his or her slender cypress
form, Oriental images meant to convey a deep esoteric meaning? Are
not his more serious verses safer tests of his real thought?
«Whilom, ere youth's conceit had waned, methought
Answers to all life's problems I had wrought;
But now, grown old and wise, too late I see
My life is spent, and all my lore is naught.
« Let him rejoice who has a loaf of bread,
A little nest wherein to lay his head,
Is slave to none, and no man slaves for him,-
In truth his lot is wondrous well bestead.
«Sooner with half a loaf contented be,
And water from a broken crock, like me,
Than lord it over one poor fellow-man,
Or to another bow the vassal knee. »
But in contemplating all these poems,- and there are a thousand
and more attributed to Omar Khayyam, many of them only replicas
and variations of certain themes: complaints of Fate and the world's
injustice, satires on the hypocrisy and impiety of the pious, love
poems, Rubaiyát in praise of spring and flowers, addresses to Allah
either in humility or in reproach, and everlasting reiteration of the
old Biblical “Eat and drink, for to-morrow you die,” — the question
comes, how many were really written by Omar himself. Those attrib-
uted to him are differentiated from the great mass of Persian verse
by their lack of florid ornamentation and arabesque, by their stately
simplicity.
Owing to his unpopularity as a heretic, comparatively few manu-
scripts have come down to us, and there is no undoubted text. The
first known translation is of one quatrain, which exists in Arabic and
in Latin. Professor E. B. Cowell was the first to make known to
English readers the wealth of his poetic and philosophic thought.
## p. 8548 (#156) ###########################################
8548
OMAR KHAYYÁM
But as his prose versions and comments appeared in a magazine
published in India, it excited little attention. It was through Edward
Fitzgerald that he became generally known to the English-speaking
world. For some time it was thought that the quatrains were of
English origin; but at last the truth was told. A new impulse was
given to the interest in Omar Khayyam by the publication, in 1884,
of the superb illustrations by Elihu Vedder, which interpreted the
text in the true Oriental and epicurean spirit. These illustrations are
not slavish reproductions of the text, but rather a parallel poem, in
keeping with it. Faithful service to the poet also was performed in
Germany by Baron von Hammer-Purgstall, by Graf von Schack, and
by Friedrich von Bodenstedt; in France by Garcin de Tassy, and by
J. B. Nicolas. Besides Fitzgerald's rendering, English versions, prose
and verse, more or less complete, have been made by Justin Huntly
McCarthy, E. H. Whinfield (whose translations are used in this sketch),
and others. There are also Hungarian and Norwegian versions, and
an edition in the original has been published in St. Petersburg.
The modernness of Omar's spirit, his view of the world, half pessi-
mistic and half defiant, his good humor and good cheer, his wit and
bonhomie, all make him appeal to a very wide circle of nineteenth-
century readers. They find in him echoes of their own doubts and
questionings; they too look upon the universe as the plaything of a
Fate which they cannot pretend to explain or change; and they too
somehow complacently feel that the Power above them “is a good
Fellow” who will not without cause damn them to the Prophet's Hell.
At the same time they recognize the claims of the perfect life.
Well sings old Omar in more serious mood,--
Or else some critic of the Mollah brood, -
«In all this changing world whereat I gaze,
Save Goodness only there is nothing good. ”
Nendeter
## p. 8549 (#157) ###########################################
OMAR KHAYYÁM
8549
RUBÁLYÁT
I
WAK
AKE! for the Sun, who scattered into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heaven,
and strikes
The Sultán's Turret with a Shaft of Light.
II
Before the phantom of False morning died,
Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried,
«When all the Temple is prepared within,
Why nods the drowsy Worshiper outside >>
III
And as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted “Open then the Door!
« You know how little while we have to stay,
And once departed, may return no more. ”
IV
Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the WHITE HAND OF Moses on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.
V
Iram indeed is gone with all his Rose,
And Jamshyd's Seven-ringed Cup where no one knows;
But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine,
And many a Garden by the Water blows.
VI
(C
And David's lips are lockt; but in divine
High-piping Pehleví, with «Wine! Wine! Wine!
Red Wine! ” – the Nightingale cries to the Rose,
That sallow cheek of hers ť incarnadine.
VII
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter - and the Bird is on the Wing.
## p. 8550 (#158) ###########################################
8550
OMAR KHAYYÁM
VIII
Whether at Naishápúr or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,-
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
IX
Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say:
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?
And this first Summer month that brings the Rose
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobád away.
х
Well, let it take them! What have we to do
With Kaikobád the Great, or Kaikhosrú ?
Let Zál and Rustum bluster as they will,
Or Hátim call to Supper-heed not you.
-
XI
With me along the strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave and Sultán is forgot -
And Peace to Mahmúd on his golden Throne!
XII
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
XIII
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come:
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
XIV
Look to the blowing Rose about us — "Lo,
Laughing,” she says, “into the world I blow,
At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw. ”
## p. 8551 (#159) ###########################################
OMAR KHAYYÁM
8551
XV
And those whọ husbanded the Golden grain,
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turned
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.
XVI
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two- is gone.
XVII
Think, in this battered Caravanserai
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultán after Sultán with his Pomp
Abode his destined Hour, and went his way.
XVIII
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahrám, that great Hunter - the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep.
the making of books, of the love for them, and of the joy a good
book gives to the children of the world, Thomas knew the full glory.
Kempen, rustic village not many miles northwest of Düsseldorf
in Rhenish Prussia, was so named in old time from the fatness of
the country, the campus. The parents of Thomas were very humble
working-people of this place; and the family name of Hämmerken
is attributed to the father's probable position as a worker in metal.
Thomas Hämmerken, sometimes called Haemmerlein, or in Latin
Malleolus, the little hammer," was born to John and Gertrude in
1380, and was carefully schooled in virtue, patience, and poverty under
their low roof-tree; until at the age of thirteen he was, according to
the custom of the time, sent to try his way to a religious life. His
brother John, fifteen years older, had made the name À Kempis a dis-
tinguished one amongst the Brothers of the Common Life,” a house
of Augustinian Canons Regular at Deventer in Overyssel, lower Neth-
erlands. The chivalry of the lowly in those ages of faith expressed
.
itself with gracious hospitality to all “poor scholars”; and we may
be sure the boy who walked the long road down to the brink of
the Zuyder Zee met no stint of God-speeds from the country folk.
But brother John had gone from Deventer to join Gerard Groot at
Windesheim, so away trudged the sturdy little wayfarer to the new
journey's end. Fondly welcomed there, he took a letter from John to
Florentius at Deventer. Under the wise direction of this great man
the little À Kempis entered the public school, then under the rector-
ship of John Boheme. While studying there the usual course of read-
ing, writing, music, Latin, catechism, and Bible history, Thomas lived
at the house of a pious lady, Zedera, widow of a knight, John of
Runen.
From about 1393-4 Thomas continued in the work of ordinary
school life under the care of Florentius, who was the most dear
»
XV-534
## p. 8530 (#138) ###########################################
8530
THOMAS À KEMPIS
ad been ele
wire aid in
is actos
Pesand.
4,2 br Pu
Kempis dit
ad conies
L 1431
(
miks, 127
TERS a
The bi
Gregor
ak of Pi
Tas Tas
stored
magine
the gitt
friend and associate of brother John. In the mean time John à Kem-
pis had been made the first prior of the new convent or monastery
of Mount St. Agnes near Zwolle, the famous Agnetenberg, to be
forever so for the life work of the rosy-cheeked schoolboy of Deven-
ter. Zutphen, the death place of Sir Philip Sidney, is near by the
schoolhouse of À Kempis. Thomas went to his brother at Mount
St. Agnes in 1399, and entered upon preparation for the life of a
monk of that house and rule. In addition to their priestly teaching
and monastic duties, the Brothers of the Common Life) were famous
bookmakers. The beautiful manuscripts which with such devout
care and worshipful art they slowly perfected with pen and brush, in
the clean and wholesome scriptorium, are gems of wonderful delight
in the great treasure-houses of such priceless things to us and ages
of men. John à Kempis was a worthy master of his brother. They
brought with them from the little smithy in Kempen a good endow-
ment of hand cunning. The prior was a fine miniature-maker, as
well as
an expert in the work of producing the perfectly written
books for which the monastery was growing well renowned. Thomas
soon became, and remained to the end of his life in spite of age, an
expert calligrapher. He was invested with the habit of the order
and admitted to the priesthood at the age of thirty-four, in 1414.
They did not do things in a hurry, those foregoers of our father
Knickerbocker. Thomas began to write his first missal in the year
after his ordination, and is said to have finished it in 1417. The first
missal! What years of slow and patient practice upon lesser works
there must have been ! Ripe in mind and full of holy thought,
Thomas, it is believed, began the Imitation either just before or
soon after his entry into the priesthood. The execution of this mar-
velous booklet,” as it was called by its first readers, engaged about
ten years.
It was produced as a series of instructive meditations,
given out from time to time to the brothers of the order. For
that reason its four books are divided, yet dependent upon each
other. At this time, and probably while engaged upon the Imita-
tion,' he wrote the Little Alphabet of the Monk in the School of
Christ) after Psalm cxix. This curious and somewhat droll work is
sometimes called the (Saint's Alphabet. '
The quiet of the teachers and book-writers at Agnetenberg was
rudely broken by an angry quarrel between the people of Overyssel
and the hierarchy. The country was laid under an interdict for
refusing to accept Zweder de Colenborgh as bishop appointed to the
see of Utrecht by Pope Martin V. This dire trouble, which began in
1425, culminated in 1429 by the closing of the churches in the banned
district. The monastery of St. Agnes, for obeying the order to
withdraw its religious ministrations from the people, was obliged to
take its people out of the disturbed and enraged province. Thomas
from to
graphe
at Bras
teks
La
within
lect
tien
a
## p. 8531 (#139) ###########################################
THOMAS À KEMPIS
8531
an
had been elected sub-prior just before this event and he was
active aid in the guidance, on St. Barnabas's day 1429, of the unhoused
monks across the Zuyder Zee to the brother house of Lunenkirk in
Friesland. Here the brothers lived until the interdict was raised in
1432 by Pope Eugenius IV. It was during this exile that John à
Kempis died. He had gone from the Agnetenberg to become rector
and confessor of the convent of Bethany near Arnheim, and being
ill in 1431 Thomas went to him. The two were together for fourteen
months, until November 4th, 1432, when the loving elder brother
went a little before through the gateway of Death.
The bitter schism which had tormented the Church since the death
of Gregory XI. in 1378, which had survived in rancor the great Coun-
cils of Pisa and of Constance, and the horror of the long Bohemian
war, was for a time thought to be ended by the same tribunal which
restored the monks of St. Agnes to their own house. One may easily
imagine therefore that their home-coming was a special occasion of
joy; a joy unfortunately not to last. That exemplary evidence against
the pretenders who have taken occasion from his humility to filch
from the monk of St. Agnes the merit of his best work, the 1441 auto-
graph manuscript of the Imitation, now in the Burgundian Library
at Brussels, may well have been begun by Thomas as an offering of
thanksgiving for the restored peace of God.
In 1447 the brothers made Thomas their sub-prior for the second
time. From the return to Mount St. Agnes until his death in 1471,
within the last decade of a century of well-spent life, the days of
À Kempis were without event beyond the routine of his teaching,
writing, and priestly toil. Like all the brothers he worked to the
last moment of physical endurance, and it is said of him that so per-
fect were his physical faculties that he never needed spectacles for
even the most delicate pen tracing.
A portrait is extant which represents him dressed in the habit of
the Augustinians, and seated upon a rocky ledge amidst the quiet of
a Dutch landscape. An open book is in his hand, another at his
feet, with the words in the country's speech, «In een hoecken mit
een boecken. ” This painting, now known as the Gertruidenberg por-
trait, was found in the abbey of St. Agnes by Franz von Tholen,
about one hundred years after the death of À Kempis. It represents
a stout, large-browed man of medium size, of Flemish features, with
lustrous, far-away-looking, kindly eyes.
Of his death Adrian de But, in his chronicle, says under the year
1471:-
(
"In this year died Brother Thomas à Kempis of Mount St. Agnes, a
professor of the Order of Canons Regular, who published many writings, and
composed in rhythm that book on the text (Who followeth Me. ) »
## p. 8532 (#140) ###########################################
8532
THOMAS À KEMPIS
na 'The
The controversy about the authorship of the Imitation is like
that about the works of Shakespeare. Its primary cause is the un-
assuming greatness of the writer, and his honesty to his rule of life.
The fuel upon which it feeds is the incapacity of little-minded men
to think of any world beyond the horizon which corrals the human
herd. Volumes have been written in this curious phase of vicarious
plagiarism; but the plain tale of contemporary testimony, and the
undoubted autographs of À Kempis himself, put them outside the
bars of evidence.
The language of À Kempis is the Latin of his day, an interesting
witness in the growth of modern tongues. It is not classical, but
smacks strongly of the land and of the people. The knowledge of
the Latin speech was far more common in the fourteenth, fifteenth,
and sixteenth centuries than is generally supposed. All people not
utterly ignorant had a speaking knowledge of it, and filled the cur-
rent of conversation with crude translations of their common saws.
À Kempis is full of the vigor of this growth of new speech. It must
have seemed strange to the stickler for classic latinity at the court
of Elizabeth to hear Launcelot Gobbo quoting from the Imitation':
“Laun. — The old proverb is very well parted between my master
Shylock and you, sir: you have the grace of God, sir, and he hath
enough. ” — Merchant of Venice,' Act ii. , scene 2.
All good books paid their tribute to the mind of À Kempis. His
favorites were, first of course the Scriptures, then St. Bernard, St.
Gregory the Great, St. Ambrose, and St. Thomas. Aristotle, Ovid,
Seneca, and Dante furnished him from time to time with apt illustra-
tions of his thought. A recent writer has well summed up in one
happy phrase the sense of Brother Thomas's methods and purpose,
by the name “A minnesinger of the love of God. ” The miscalled
mysticism of Thomas is the poesy of a love which disdains all lesser
objects and fixes itself to the person of God himself. There is no
abstruse life problem in such a bent of soul. The aspiration towards
the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, which well sung wins the
poet's bay wreath, stays not the willingness of men's ears.
The smaller works of À Kempis are -The Soliloquy of the Soul,'
(Solitude and Silence,' 'The Little Garden of Roses,' 'The Valley
of Lilies,' and a number of similar essays. He wrote also some
sweet church hymns, and three books of the Lives of the Canons)
and the Chronicle of St. Agnes. The first edition of his works was
published at Nuremberg by George Pirkheimer, in 1494.
(
Jacallelone
## p. 8533 (#141) ###########################################
THOMAS Å KEMPIS
8533
ON THE JOYS OF HEAVEN
From “The Voice of Christian Life in Song: or, Hymns and Hymn-Writers
of Many Lands and Ages)
H
Igh the angel choirs are raising
Heart and voice in harmony;
The Creator King still praising,
Whom in beauty there they see.
Sweetest strains, from soft harps stealing;
Trumpets, notes of triumph pealing;
Radiant wings and white stoles gleaming,
Up the steps of glory streaming;
Where the heavenly bells are ringing,
Holy, holy, holy! singing
To the mighty Trinity!
Ioly, holy, holy! crying;
For all earthly care and sighing
In that city cease to be!
Every voice is there harmonious,
Praising God in hymns symphonious;
Love each heart with light enfolding
As they stand in peace beholding
There the Triune Deity!
Whom adore the seraphim,
Aye with love eternal burning;
Venerate the cherubim,
To their fount of honor turning;
Whilst angelic thrones adoring
Gaze upon His majesty.
Oh how beautiful that region,
And how fair that heavenly legion,
Where thus men and angels blend!
Glorious will that city be,
Full of deep tranquillity,
Light and peace from end to end!
All the happy dwellers there
Shine in robes of purity,
Keep the law of charity,
Bound in firmest unity;
Labor finds them not, nor care.
## p. 8534 (#142) ###########################################
8534
THOMAS À KEMPIS
OF THE
Ignorance can ne'er perplex,
Nothing tempt them, nothing vex;
Joy and health their fadeless blessing,
Always all things good possessing.
BLESS thee,
ON CHRISTIAN PATIENCE
because t
wretch as
O Father
bee, who ar
De who am
I bless ti
From "Hymns and Poems)
Adversa mundi tolera
begitter So-
Fºk
Come th
OR Christ's dear sake with courage bear
Whatever ills betide;
Prosperity is oft a snare,
And puffs the heart with pride.
shal: come
PT.
Thou a
Thou a
What seemed thy loss will often prove
To be thy truest gain;
And sufferings borne with patient love
A jeweled crown obtain.
.
tion,
But be
therefore
is thee.
By this thou wilt the angels please,
Wilt glorify the Lord,
Thy neighbor's faith and hope increase,
And earn a rich reward.
or all ho
Free
Gigate 2
Ceansed
Tersere
Brief is this life, and brief its pain,
But long the bliss to come;
Trials endured for Christ attain
A place with martyrdom.
Lor
makes
laat is
The Christian soul by patience grows
More perfect day by day;
And brighter still, and brighter glows
With heaven's eternal ray;
makes
TH
To Christ becomes inore lovable,
More like the Saints on high;
Dear to the good; invincible
Against the Enemy.
1
،
1
aita
te
Do
## p. 8535 (#143) ###########################################
THOMAS À KEMPIS
8535
OF THE WONDERFUL EFFECT OF DIVINE LOVE
From the Imitation of Christ)
I
Bless thee, heavenly Father, Father of my Lord Jesus Christ,
because thou hast vouchsafed to be mindful of so poor a
wretch as I.
O Father of mercies and God of all comfort, I give thanks to
thee, who art sometimes pleased to refresh with thy consolation
me who am unworthy of any consolation.
I bless thee and glorify thee evermore, together with thy only
begotten Son and the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, to all eternity.
Come then, Lord God, holy one that lovest me! for when thou
shalt come into my heart, all that is within me will leap with
joy.
Thou art my glory and the rejoicing of my heart.
Thou art my hope and my refuge in the day of my tribula-
tion.
But because I am as yet weak in love and imperfect in virtue,
therefore do I stand in need of being strengthened and comforted
by thee. Wherefore visit me again and again; and instruct me
by all holy discipline.
Free me from evil passions and heal my heart of all inor-
dinate affections; that being inwardly healed and thoroughly
;
cleansed, I may become fit to love, strong to suffer, constant to
persevere.
Love is a great thing, a great good indeed, which alone
makes light all that is burdensome, and bears with even mind all
that is uneven.
For it carries a burthen without being burthened; and it
makes all that which is bitter sweet and savory.
The love of Jesus is noble, and spurs us on to do great things,
and excites us to desire always things more perfect.
Love desires to have its abode above, and not to be kept back
by things below.
Love desires to be at liberty and estranged from all worldly
affection, lest its inner view be hindered, lest it suffer itself to
be entangled through some temporal interest, or give way through
mishap.
Nothing is sweeter than love; nothing stronger, nothing higher,
nothing broader, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller or better
## p. 8536 (#144) ###########################################
8536
THOMAS À KEMPIS
Lore is
temptible is
Gex: alway
the relish
TILVPa
snedt
He w
OF THE
TE
VIN,
S
1. th
beart, a
in heaven and in earth; for love is born of God, and can rest
only in God above all things created.
The lover flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and not held.
He gives all for all and has all in all, because he rests in One
supreme above all, from whom all good flows and proceeds.
He looks not at the gifts, but turns himself above all goods
to the Giver.
Love often knows no measure, but warmly glows above all
measure.
Love feels no burthen, regards not labors, would willingly
do more than it is able, pleads not impossibility, because it feels
sure that it can and may do all things.
It is able therefore to do all things; and it makes good many
deficiencies, and frees many things for being carried out, where
he who loves not faints and lies down.
Love watches, and sleeping, slumbers not; weary, is not tired;
straitened, is not constrained; frightened, is not disturbed; but
like a living flame and a burning torch, it bursts forth upwards
and safely overpasses all.
Whosoever loves knows the cry of this voice.
A loud cry in the ears of God is that ardent affection of the
soul which says, My God, my love, thou art all mine and I am
all thine.
Enlarge me in thy love, that I may learn to taste with the
inner mouth of the heart how sweet it is to love, and to be dis-
solved and swim in a sea of love.
Let me be possessed by love, going above myself through
excess of fervor and awe.
Let me sing the song of love; let me follow thee, my beloved,
on high; let my soul lose herself in thy praises, exulting in
love.
Let me love thee more than myself, and myself only for thee,
and all in thee who truly love thee, as the law of love which
shines forth from thee commands.
Love is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant, and delightful; strong,
patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, manly, and never seek-
ing itself; for where a man seeks himself, there he falls from
love.
Love is circumspect, humble, and upright; not soft, not light,
not intent upon vain things; sober, chaste, steadfast, quiet, and
guarded in all its senses.
Rete
tadletin
VALI V
Fo-
isleis
ai
Tith
2
## p. 8537 (#145) ###########################################
THOMAS À KEMPIS
8537
-
Love is submissive and obedient to superiors; mean and con-
temptible in its own eyes; devout and ever giving thanks to
God; always trusting and hoping in him, even when it tastes not
the relish of God's sweetness,- for there is no living in love
without pain.
Whosoever is not ready to suffer all things, and to stand
resigned to the will of the beloved, is not worthy to be called a
lover.
He who loves must willingly embrace all that is hard and
bitter, for the sake of the beloved.
OF THE DESIRE OF ETERNAL LIFE, AND HOW GREAT ARE
THE BENEFITS PROMISED TO THEM THAT FIGHT
From the Imitation of Christ)
SOM
I.
ON, when thou perceivest the desire of eternal bliss to be in-
fused into thee from above, and thou wouldst fain go out of
the tabernacle of this body, that thou mightest contemplate
My brightness without any shadow of change, - enlarge thy
heart, and receive this holy inspiration with thy whole desire.
Return the greatest thanks to the Supreme Goodness, which
dealeth so condescendingly with thee, mercifully visiteth thee,
ardently inciteth thee, and powerfully raiseth thee up, lest by thy
own weight thou fall down to the things of earth.
For it is not by thy own thoughtfulness or endeavor that thou
receivest this, but by the mere condescension of heavenly grace
and Divine regard; that so thou mayest advance in virtues and
greater humility, and prepare thyself for future conflicts, and labor
with the whole affection of thy heart to keep close to Me, and
serve Me with a fervent will.
2. Son, the fire often burneth, but the flame ascendeth not
without smoke.
And so the desires of some are on fire after heavenly things,
and yet they are not free from the temptation of carnal affection.
Therefore is it not altogether purely for God's honor that
they act, when they so earnestly petition Him.
Such also is oftentimes thy desire, which thou hast professed
to be so importunate.
For that is not pure and perfect which is alloyed with self-
interest.
## p. 8538 (#146) ###########################################
8538
THOMAS À KEMPIS
There
itre
at um
And h
migher
6. Bi
minat
bence des
ܝܐ ܬܐ
Fur ir
Dit for:
Tänst des
There
of 1
There
RUS
3. Ask not that which is pleasant and convenient, but that
which is acceptable to Me and for My honor; for if thou judgest
rightly, thou oughtest to prefer and to follow My appointment
rather than thine own desire or any other desirable thing.
I know thy desire, and I have often heard thy groanings.
Thou wouldst wish to be already in the liberty of the glory
of the children of God.
Now doth the eternal dwelling, and the heavenly country full
of festivity, delight thee.
But that hour is not yet come; for there is yet another time,
a time of war, a time of labor and of probation.
Thou desirest to be filled with the Sovereign Good, but thou
canst not at present attain to it.
I am He: wait for Me, saith the Lord, until the kingdom of
God come.
4. Thou hast yet to be tried upon earth and exercised in
many things.
Consolation shall sometimes be given thee, but abundant
satiety shall not be granted thee.
Take courage, therefore, and be valiant, as well in doing as
in suffering things repugnant to nature,
Thou must put on the new man, and be changed into another
person.
That which thou wouldst not, thou must oftentimes do; and
that which thou wouldst, thou must leave undone.
What pleaseth others shall prosper, what is pleasing to thee
shall not succeed.
What others say shall be hearkened to; what thou sayest shall
be reckoned as naught.
Others shall ask, and shall receive; thou shalt ask, and not
obtain.
5. Others shall be great in the esteem of men; about thee
nothing shall be said.
To others this or that shall be committed; but thou shalt be
accounted as of no use.
At this, nature will sometimes repine, and it will be a great
matter if thou bear it with silence.
In these, and many such-like things, the faithful servant of
the Lord is wont to be tried how far he can deny and break
himself in all things.
umplaint
Tk
faith
etti.
That
CUWIE
Bu
***** 2-3
W
T
## p. 8539 (#147) ###########################################
THOMAS À KEMPIS
8539
There is scarce anything in which thou standest so much in
need of dying to thyself as in seeing and suffering things that
are contrary to thy will, and more especially when those things
are commanded which seem to thee inconvenient and of little use.
And because, being under authority, thou darest not resist the
higher power, therefore it seemeth to thee hard to walk at the
beck of another, and wholly to give up thy own opinion.
6. But consider, son, the fruit of these labors, their speedy
termination, and their reward exceeding great; and thou wilt not
hence derive affliction, but the most strengthening consolation in
thy suffering
For in regard to that little of thy will which thou now will-
ingly forsakest, thou shalt forever have thy will in heaven.
For there thou shalt find all that thou willest, all that thou
canst desire.
There shall be to thee the possession of every good, without
fear of losing it.
There thy will, always one with Me, shall not covet any ex-
traneous or private thing. There no one shall resist thee, no one
complain of thee, no one obstruct thee, nothing shall stand in thy
way; but every desirable good shall be present at the same mo-
ment, shall replenish all thy affections and satiate them to the full.
There I will give thee glory for the contumely thou hast suf-
fered; a garment of praise for thy sorrow; and for having been
seated here in the lowest place, the throne of My kingdom for-
ever.
There will the fruit of obedience appear, there will the labor
of penance rejoice, and humble subjection shall be gloriously
crowned.
Now, therefore, bow thyself down humbly under the hands of
all, and heed not who it was that said or commanded this.
But let it be thy great care, that whether thy superior or
inferior or equal require anything of thee, or hint at anything,
thou take all in good part, and labor with a sincere will to per-
form it.
Let one seek this, another that; let this man glory in this
thing, another in that, and be praised a thousand thousand times:
but thou, for thy part, rejoice neither in this nor in that, but in
the contempt of thyself, and in My good pleasure and honor
alone.
This is what thou hast to wish for, that whether in life or in
death, God may be always glorified in thee.
## p. 8540 (#148) ###########################################
8540
THOMAS À KEMPIS
THAT A MAN SHOULD NOT BE TOO MUCH DEJECTED, EVEN
WHEN HE FALLETH INTO SOME DEFECTS
From the (Imitation of Christ)
M
destrore
Fremt
water i
nach i
Encs
Y son, patience and humility in adversities are more pleasing
to Me, than much comfort and devotion when things go
well.
Why art thou so grieved for every little matter spoken against
thee?
Although it had been much more, thou oughtest not to have
been moved.
But now let it pass: it is not the first that hath happened,
nor is it anything new; neither shall it be the last, if thou live
long
Thou art courageous enough, so long as nothing adverse be-
falleth thee.
Thou canst give good counsel also, and canst strengthen
others with thy words; but when any tribulation suddenly comes
to thy door, thou failest in counsel and in strength.
Observe then thy great frailty, of which thou too often hast
experience in small occurrences.
It is notwithstanding intended for thy good, when these and
such-like trials happen to thee.
Put it out of thy heart the best thou canst; and if tribulation
have touched thee, yet let it not cast thee down nor long per-
plex thee.
Bear it at least patiently, if thou canst not joyfully.
Although thou be unwilling to hear it, and conceivest indig-
nation thereat, yet restrain thyself, and suffer no inordinate word
to pass out of thy mouth, whereby [Christ's] little ones may be
offended.
The storm which is now raised shall quickly be appeased,
and inward grief shall be sweetened by the return of grace.
Be more patient of soul, and gird thyself to greater endur-
sung so
Chartit
che,
10
the
w
tan
ance.
3.
All is not lost, although thou do feel thyself very often
afflicted or grievously tempted.
Thou art a man, and not God; thou art flesh, not an angel.
How canst thou look to continue alway in the same state of
virtue, when an angel in heaven hath fallen, as also the first
man in Paradise ?
## p. 8541 (#149) ###########################################
8541
OMAR KHAYYÁM
1050 (? )-1123 (? )
BY NATHAN HASKELL DOLE
KN A reed-grown marshy plain at the foot of the Elbruz
Mountains stands an ancient city of Khorássán. It existed
before the days of Alexander the Great, who is said to have
destroyed it. It was then rebuilt by Shapúr, for whom it was named.
From the lofty hills, fertile to the very top, twelve thousand streams
water the province, and the river Saka lends its beauty to this city,
which is blessed above others with a pure and temperate climate.
Exquisite fruits and flowers abound. Here bloom the roses,
«With petals closed against the winds' disgrace);
name
fields of tulips droop their heavy heads; the violet and narcissus, the
jessamine and eglantine and lily, of which the Persian poets have
sung so eloquently, scent the air with their perfumes. Here the soft
languorous night has since ages immemorial listened to the amorous
chanting of the bulbul and the monotonous complaint of the ring-
dove, dear to lovers. This city and the villages scattered about in
its vicinity were famous by reason of the poets who there first saw
the light. Nishápúr itself was the birthplace of the great poet and
astronomer Omar, called Khayyam or the Tent-maker. His whole
was Ghias ud-din Abul Fath Omar Ibn Ibrahim al-Khayyám.
The date of his birth is not exactly known; but there is a tradition
that he died in the year 1123 of our era (517 A. H. ), and that he fin-
ished his school education in 1042.
When Omar was a youth, Nishápúr boasted the presence of one
of the greatest and wisest men of Khorássán, “a man highly honored
and reverenced. ” This was the Imám Muaffek, who had the reputa-
tion of being such a perfect teacher that every one who studied the
Koran and the traditions of the prophets under him would assuredly
attain to honor and happiness. ” In his school Omar was instructed
in Mussulman lore, and made the acquaintance of two youths who
equally with himself won the fame promised the Imám's faithful
pupils. One of these was- Nizam ul Mulk, who became Vizier to two
successive Shahs; the other was Hassan Ibn Sabah, afterwards founder
of the Iranian Ismailites, the terrible Shaikh of the Assassins. Nizam
## p. 8542 (#150) ###########################################
8542
OMAR KHAYYÁM
ul Mulk in his Testament (Wasáyá) tells how the friendship of the
three was formed:-
ti betraving
ne posecuted
strs the do
brated there
mat of attend
«Both Omar and Hassan were of the same age as I was, and equally
remarkable for excellence of intelligence and power of intellect. We became
friends, and when we went out from the Imám's class we used to repeat to
one another the lesson we had just heard.
One day that miscreant
Hassan said to us, (It is the general opinion that the disciples of Imám
Muaffik attain to fortune; and no doubt one of us will do so, even though all
What agreement or compact is there now between us? ) I said,
(Whatever you please. ' He answered, "Whichever of us may attain to for-
tune shall share it with the others, and not engross it himself. ' We agreed
to those terms, and a compact was made accordingly. ”
pre opinius
papar be
baie pasked
may not.
It is ext-
him out an
isan auda
inced 02
the introca
He is
ice he
ಸೌದಿ ಇದೆ.
Omar Fico
of Fire
this and
lity as
mpetit
He goes on to tell how after his appointment as Vizier to the
Shah Alp Arslan, Omar Khayyam appeared before him; but instead
of accepting preferment at court he said, “The greatest favor which
you can do me is to let me live in retirement, where under your
protection I may occupy myself in amassing the riches of learning
and in praying for your long life. ”
Accordingly Nizam ul Mulk assigned Omar a yearly pension of
1200 gold miskals and allowed him to retire to his native city, where
he devoted himself especially to the study of mathematics and astron-
omy. On the succession of Malik Shah he was appointed Astronomer
Royal at Merv, in which capacity he compiled some astronomical
tables called Zij-i-Maliksháni. He was one of the eight learned men
employed to revise the ancient Persian calendar; a work comparable
to the reform of the Julian calendar under Pope Gregory XIII. five
centuries later, and by some authorities considered even preferable
to it. There is in existence a work on algebra which Omar compiled,
and a study of The Difficulties of Euclid's Definitions) is preserved
in the Library at Leyden. A Persian biographer who lived at Nishá-
púr, and may have known Omar personally, reflects the general
impression made by the astronomer-poet on his contemporaries:-
tarth, and
par le
To the
Tribe
Coni
«Omar al-Khayyam, Imám of Khorássán, and the greatest scholar of his
time, was versed in all the learning of the Greeks. He was wont to exhort
men to seek the One Author of all by purifying the bodily actions to secure
the sanctification of the soul. He also used to recommend the study of politics
as laid down in Greek authors. The later Sufis have caught at the apparent
sense of part of his poems and accommodated them to their own canon, mak-
ing them a subject of discussion in their assemblies and conventicles, but the
esoteric sense consists in axioms of natural religion and principles of universal
obligation. When the men of his time anathematized his doctrines, and drew
forth his opinions from the concealment in which he had veiled them, he went
in fear of his life, and placed a check on the sallies of his tongue and his
pen. He made the pilgrimage, but it was from accident rather than piety,
## p. 8543 (#151) ###########################################
OMAR KHAYYÁM
8543
still betraying his unorthodox views. On his arrival at Baghdad, the men
who prosecuted the same ancient studies as he, flocked to meet him; but
he shut the door in their faces, as one who had renounced those studies and
cultivated them no longer. On his return to his native city he made a prac-
tice of attending the morning and evening prayers, and of disguising his
private opinions; but for all that they were no secret. In astronomy and in
philosophy he was without a rival, and his eminence in those sciences would
have passed into a proverb had he only possessed self-control. ”
It is extremely probable that Sharastani's account of him — making
him out an arrant hypocrite — was tinged by prejudice. The Epi-
curean audacity of thought” expressed in his poems caused him to be
looked on by his own people with suspicion. Edward Fitzgerald in
the introduction to his translation or paraphrase says:-
«He is said to have been especially hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose
practice he ridiculed, and whose faith amounts to little more than his own
when stript of the mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism under which
Omar would not hide. Their poets, including Hāfiz, who are (with the excep-
tion of Firdausi) the most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely indeed of
Omar's material, but turning it to a mystical use more convenient to them-
selves and the people they addressed, - a people quite as quick of doubt as of
belief; as keen of bodily sense as of intellectual; and delighting in a cloudy
composition of both, in which they could float luxuriously between heaven and
earth, and this world and the next, on the wings of a poetical expression that
might serve indifferently for either. Omar was too honest of heart as well as
of head for this. Having failed (however mistakenly) of finding any Provi-
dence but Destiny, and any world but this, he set about making the most of
it; preferring rather to soothe the soul through the senses into acquiescence
with ings as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain disquietude after
what they might be. ”
Contentedly living in his beautiful city of Nishápúr, where the
roses which he loved so passionately wafted their fragrance across his
terrace, occupied with those lofty questions which come home with
doubly powerful insistence to an astronomer, he looked at the world
with curiously quizzical eyes. Occasionally, as a recreation perhaps,
he would compose an exquisitely perfect little quatrain or Rubái'y,
the conventional form of which called for the first two lines and the
last to rhyme, the rhymes being in many cases triple, quadruple, or
even quintuple. The third line was generally left blank, though there
are instances of the same rhyme occurring in all four lines. Like
the conventional Japanese poems, these Rubáiyát are each entirely
distinct and disconnected. In the manuscripts that have come down
to the present time they are always copied in alphabetical order,
arranged in accordance with the letter that ends the rhyme.
Edward Fitzgerald ingeniously tessellated a selection of these
quatrains into a sort of Persian mosaic, making of them a sort of
loosely connected elegy, and thus gave extraordinary emphasis to one
## p. 8544 (#152) ###########################################
8544
OMAR KHAYYÁM
Esques so far
the light of God
If one
part of Omar Khayyam's many-sided genius. It is safe to say that
Omar himself had no such consistent scheme of pessimism.
may judge at all from the manuscripts, he was a creature of many
varying moods. At one time his audacious impiety is colossal:
a
T
sr
Omar loved
ai confuse.
si opponents
«On that dread day, when wrath shall rend the sky,
And darkness dim the bright stars' galaxy,
I'll seize the Loved One by his skirt, and cry
(Why hast thou doomed these guiltless ones to die ? ) »
At another time he is full of hope; the future life seems to gleam on
his inner sight:-
“Death's terrors spring from baseless fantasy,
Death yields the tree of immortality;
Since 'Isa (Jesus] breathed new life into my soul,
Eternal death has washed its hands of me. "
ictu retort. F
Epicurean? T
tarem beaker
sister of w
alance by
chanted aroun
What was
At another he is a fatalist:-
zary of creat
“When Allah mixt my clay, he knew full well
My future acts, and could each one foretell;
Without his will no act of mine was wrought:
Is it then just to punish me in hell ?
is elected as
di water swa
descent cues
God are 11
hele: be ist
man to a he
:,-for if
pacious; bu
<< 'Twas writ at first, whatever was to be,
By pen unheeding bliss or misery,
Yea, writ upon the tablet once for all:
To murmur or resist is vanity. ”
In his liberality toward other creeds he stands at the very antipodes
of the narrow-minded Muslim of his day, or of ours:-
“Pagodas, just as mosques, are homes of prayer;
'Tis prayer that church-bells chime unto the air:
Yea, Church and Ka'ba, Rosary and Cross,
Are all but divers tongues of world-wide prayer.
no grace is
na sia in ti
so inexorabl
4 What
(c
“Hearts with the light of love illumined well,
Whether in mosque or synagogue they dwell,
Have their names written in the book of love,
Unvext by hopes of heaven or fears of hell.
practical a
“They say, when the last trump shall sound its knell
Our Friend will sternly judge and doom to hell.
Can aught but good from perfect goodness come ?
Compose your trembling hearts, 'twill all be well. ”
Again he paraphrases the words of the Christ:-
“If you seek Him, abandon child and wife,
Arise, and sever all these ties to life:
All these are bonds to check you on your course;
Arise, and cut these bonds as with a knife. )
1-
## p. 8545 (#153) ###########################################
OMAR KHAYYÁM
8545
He goes so far as to say that it is better to be a drunkard and see
the light of God than be in darkness in the sanctuary:
«In taverns better far commune with thee
Than pray in mosques and fail thy face to see!
Oh, first and last of all thy creatures thou;
'Tis thine to burn and thine to cherish me. ”
(
Omar loved to indulge in sophistries and paradoxes; to mystify
and confuse. He delighted in drawing on himself the hatred of his
Sufi opponents, and then teasing them with the flashing wit of his
keen retort. How can one tell whether he was at heart a cynic or an
Epicurean? Was the wine-cup which he exalts in so many stanzas a
tavern beaker, or a symbol of the Divine ? Was the “cypress-slender
minister of wine » an earthly maiden with whom he sported in idle
dalliance by the side of the babbling brook while the nightingales
chanted around, or was the expression a mystic type of the soul ?
What was man in his eyes ? At one moment he was the very sum-
mary of creation, the “bowl of Jamshed” in which the whole universe
is reflected as in a mirror; at another he is a puppet, he is as a drop
of water swallowed up in the vast ocean, a bubble sparkling with iri-
descent hues for a brief instant and then vanishing forever. His ideas
of God are no less contradictory. On the one hand God is approach-
able: he is the friend of man, infinitely merciful, too kind to doom
man to a hell which man has no reason to fear because he is a sin-
ner,- for if he were not a sinner, where would Mercy be ? Allah is
gracious; but if the poor sinner must earn his grace by works, then
no grace is it indeed. But on the other hand, God is responsible for
the sin in the world: God rolls that merciless (wheel of Fate » which
so inexorably crushes the king on his throne and the ant on the ant-
hill. What complaints he utters about that rolling orb!
«The wheel on high, still busied with despite,
Will ne'er unloose a wretch from his sad plight;
But when it lights upon a smitten heart,
Straightway essays another blow to smite.
“Dark wheel! how inany lovers hast thou slain
Like Mabmud and Ayaz, O inhumane!
Come, let us drink! thou grantest not two lives;
When one is spent, we find it not again. ”
The bitter fatalism, worthy of Koheleth, soon translates itself into
practical acceptance of all the good things of earth:-
«In the sweet Spring a grassy bank I sought,
And thither wine and a fair Houri brought;
And though the people called me graceless dog,
Gave not to Paradise another thought.
V-535
## p. 8546 (#154) ###########################################
8546
OMAR KHAYYÁM
«Life void of wine and minstrels with their lutes,
And the soft murmurs of Irakian Autes,
Were nothing worth: I scan the world and see,
Save pleasure, life yields only bitter fruits.
(And now
moment, be sure
zake pilgrima
pendid beare
stems, CONDE
and drop bloc
“O soul! lay up all earthly goods in store;
Thy mead with pleasure's flowerets spangle o'er;
And know 'tis all as dew that decks the Aowers
For one short night, and then is seen no more!
tomated moa
the lament i
s triumphan
Oma: knew
Bat was
«Like tulips in the Spring your cups lift up,
And with a tulip-cheeked companion sup
With joy your wine, or e'er this azure wheel
With some unlooked for blast upset your cup. ”
be paints -
and the ne
form. Orier
mat his mo
The Prophet promises for the Faithful in the Paradise to come,
multiplied joys: feasts of many courses, rivers running with wine and
milk, and exquisite Houris, star-eyed maidens with bodies made of
musk or saffron; but Omar says if those things are to be in the world
to come, then surely it is right to enjoy their counterparts on earth.
He invites us to the tavern, there to forget the sorrows of life; he
comes forth from the tavern to mock at the hypocritical sages who in
reality envy him his freedom.
A recent writer, James A. Murray, in the Fortnightly Review, elo-
quently pictures one phase of Omar's poetry :-
«Behind this joyous life lies the very shadow of death. Omar entreats his
mistress to pour wine for him while she can, before the potters make vessels
from their dust; to love him while the light is in her eyes and the laughter
in her voice. It is the old sorrow for the dead, made personal and thereby
increased in poignancy and pathos. The lion and the lizard haunt the courts
of Jamshed's splendor, the wild ass stamps above the head of Bahram; birds
wail over the skull of Kai Kawus, potters mold upon their wheels the ashes
of Faridun and Kai Khosru. Those delicate lithe curves were once the more
perfect lines of a human body; the glass, the goblet, that one may break in
carelessness, thrills with the anguish of a living creature. In like manner
Omar prays that when he is dead he may be ground to dust, and mingled
into clay with wine, and molded to a stopper for the wine-jar's mouth. For
all men have a regeneration which is sometimes beautiful and sometimes
base. Roses and tulips spring from the dust of monarchs; beneath purple
violets, dark ladies are laid. And still that pitiful refrain continues: of what
avail is it, when men are dead, and do not feel or see or hear? It is the
spirit of a most noble Hellenic epitaph, strangely distant from the Greeks in
its unrestraint: -“We, the dead, are only bones and ashes: waste no precious
ointments or wreaths upon our tomb, for it is only marble; kindle no funeral
pyre, for it is useless extravagance. If you have anything to give, give it
while I am alive; but if you steep ashes in wine you only make mud, for the
dead man does not drink. )
But it
and mot
ad var
ནན
انة بها
mustice
pemas,
either i
3. 1Bit
wondes,
lated to
le temaer
simpic
Ofi
scripts
## p. 8547 (#155) ###########################################
OMAR KHAYYÁM
8547
«And now the dust of Omar, as that of all men, brings forth flowers: (God
knows,' he says, (for whom. ) For whom? To-day travelers from all countries
make pilgrimage to the sepulchre in that soft garden where he rests. The
splendid heaven of Nishápúr is over him; the cool earth embraces him; brown
stems, crowned heavily with white and crimson blossom, rise from his ashes,
and drop blown petals on his tomb. The ringdove murmurs in that low full-
throated moan whose significance is sculptured over the ruins of Persepolis,-
the lament for strong dead men and imperious queens. But the dawn is
as triumphant, the incense-wind as sweet, the gardens flower-laden, as when
Omar knew them more than nine hundred years ago.
But was the grave astronomer the wine-bibber and voluptuary that
he paints himself? Must we not read into his praise of the wine-cup
and the narcissus-eyed Cup-bearer with his or her slender cypress
form, Oriental images meant to convey a deep esoteric meaning? Are
not his more serious verses safer tests of his real thought?
«Whilom, ere youth's conceit had waned, methought
Answers to all life's problems I had wrought;
But now, grown old and wise, too late I see
My life is spent, and all my lore is naught.
« Let him rejoice who has a loaf of bread,
A little nest wherein to lay his head,
Is slave to none, and no man slaves for him,-
In truth his lot is wondrous well bestead.
«Sooner with half a loaf contented be,
And water from a broken crock, like me,
Than lord it over one poor fellow-man,
Or to another bow the vassal knee. »
But in contemplating all these poems,- and there are a thousand
and more attributed to Omar Khayyam, many of them only replicas
and variations of certain themes: complaints of Fate and the world's
injustice, satires on the hypocrisy and impiety of the pious, love
poems, Rubaiyát in praise of spring and flowers, addresses to Allah
either in humility or in reproach, and everlasting reiteration of the
old Biblical “Eat and drink, for to-morrow you die,” — the question
comes, how many were really written by Omar himself. Those attrib-
uted to him are differentiated from the great mass of Persian verse
by their lack of florid ornamentation and arabesque, by their stately
simplicity.
Owing to his unpopularity as a heretic, comparatively few manu-
scripts have come down to us, and there is no undoubted text. The
first known translation is of one quatrain, which exists in Arabic and
in Latin. Professor E. B. Cowell was the first to make known to
English readers the wealth of his poetic and philosophic thought.
## p. 8548 (#156) ###########################################
8548
OMAR KHAYYÁM
But as his prose versions and comments appeared in a magazine
published in India, it excited little attention. It was through Edward
Fitzgerald that he became generally known to the English-speaking
world. For some time it was thought that the quatrains were of
English origin; but at last the truth was told. A new impulse was
given to the interest in Omar Khayyam by the publication, in 1884,
of the superb illustrations by Elihu Vedder, which interpreted the
text in the true Oriental and epicurean spirit. These illustrations are
not slavish reproductions of the text, but rather a parallel poem, in
keeping with it. Faithful service to the poet also was performed in
Germany by Baron von Hammer-Purgstall, by Graf von Schack, and
by Friedrich von Bodenstedt; in France by Garcin de Tassy, and by
J. B. Nicolas. Besides Fitzgerald's rendering, English versions, prose
and verse, more or less complete, have been made by Justin Huntly
McCarthy, E. H. Whinfield (whose translations are used in this sketch),
and others. There are also Hungarian and Norwegian versions, and
an edition in the original has been published in St. Petersburg.
The modernness of Omar's spirit, his view of the world, half pessi-
mistic and half defiant, his good humor and good cheer, his wit and
bonhomie, all make him appeal to a very wide circle of nineteenth-
century readers. They find in him echoes of their own doubts and
questionings; they too look upon the universe as the plaything of a
Fate which they cannot pretend to explain or change; and they too
somehow complacently feel that the Power above them “is a good
Fellow” who will not without cause damn them to the Prophet's Hell.
At the same time they recognize the claims of the perfect life.
Well sings old Omar in more serious mood,--
Or else some critic of the Mollah brood, -
«In all this changing world whereat I gaze,
Save Goodness only there is nothing good. ”
Nendeter
## p. 8549 (#157) ###########################################
OMAR KHAYYÁM
8549
RUBÁLYÁT
I
WAK
AKE! for the Sun, who scattered into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heaven,
and strikes
The Sultán's Turret with a Shaft of Light.
II
Before the phantom of False morning died,
Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried,
«When all the Temple is prepared within,
Why nods the drowsy Worshiper outside >>
III
And as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted “Open then the Door!
« You know how little while we have to stay,
And once departed, may return no more. ”
IV
Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the WHITE HAND OF Moses on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.
V
Iram indeed is gone with all his Rose,
And Jamshyd's Seven-ringed Cup where no one knows;
But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine,
And many a Garden by the Water blows.
VI
(C
And David's lips are lockt; but in divine
High-piping Pehleví, with «Wine! Wine! Wine!
Red Wine! ” – the Nightingale cries to the Rose,
That sallow cheek of hers ť incarnadine.
VII
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter - and the Bird is on the Wing.
## p. 8550 (#158) ###########################################
8550
OMAR KHAYYÁM
VIII
Whether at Naishápúr or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,-
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
IX
Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say:
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?
And this first Summer month that brings the Rose
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobád away.
х
Well, let it take them! What have we to do
With Kaikobád the Great, or Kaikhosrú ?
Let Zál and Rustum bluster as they will,
Or Hátim call to Supper-heed not you.
-
XI
With me along the strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave and Sultán is forgot -
And Peace to Mahmúd on his golden Throne!
XII
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
XIII
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come:
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
XIV
Look to the blowing Rose about us — "Lo,
Laughing,” she says, “into the world I blow,
At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw. ”
## p. 8551 (#159) ###########################################
OMAR KHAYYÁM
8551
XV
And those whọ husbanded the Golden grain,
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turned
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.
XVI
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two- is gone.
XVII
Think, in this battered Caravanserai
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultán after Sultán with his Pomp
Abode his destined Hour, and went his way.
XVIII
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahrám, that great Hunter - the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep.
