he grave is the "be-all" and
"end-all" of life. The poet speaks in tones of bitterest lamentation
when he sees succumb to Fate all that is bright and fresh and beautiful.
At his brightest moments he gives expression to a vague pantheism, but
all his views of the power that lies behind life are obscured and
perturbed by sceptical despondency. He is the great man of science, who,
like other men of genius too deeply immersed in the study of natural law
or abstract reasoning, has lost all touch with that great world of
spiritual things which we speak of as religion, and which we can only
come in contact with through those instinctive emotions which scientific
analysis very often does so much to stifle. There are many men of
science who, like Darwin, have come, through the study of material
phenomena in nature, to a condition of mind which is indifferent in
matters of religion. But the remarkable feature in the case of Omar is
that he, who could see so clearly and feel so acutely, has been enabled
also to embody in a poem of imperishable beauty the opinions which he
shared with many of his contemporaries. The range of his mind can only
be measured by supposing that Sir Isaac Newton had written Manfred or
Childe Harold. But even more remarkable is what we may call the
modernity of this twelfth century Persian poet. We sometimes hear it
said that great periods of civilization end in a manifestation of
infidelity and despair. There can be no doubt that a great deal of
restlessness and misgiving characterizes the minds of to-day in regard
to all questions of religion. Europe, in the nineteenth century,
as reflected in the works of Byron, Spencer, Darwin, and Schopenhauer,
is very much in the same condition as intellectual Persia in the twelfth
century, so far as the pessimism of Omar is representative of his day.
This accounts for the wide popularity of Fitzgerald's "Rubaiyat." The
book has been read eagerly and fondly studied, as if it were a new book
of _fin du siecle_ production: the last efflorescence of intellectual
satiety, cynicism, and despair. Yet the book is eight centuries old, and
it has been the task of this seer of the East to reveal to the West the
heart-sickness under which the nations were suffering.

Omar Khayyam--that is, Omar the tent-maker--was born in the year 1050 at
Nishapur, the little Damascus (as it is called) of Persia: famous as a
seat of learning, as a place of religion, and a centre of commerce. In