least remarkable quality of
Fitzgerald's poem was its fidelity to the original.

In short, Omar was a Fitzgerald, or Fitzgerald was a reincarnation of
Omar. It was not to the disadvantage of the latter poet that he followed
so closely in the footsteps of the earlier. A man of extraordinary
genius had appeared in the world, had sung a song of incomparable beauty
and power in an environment no longer worthy of him, in a language of
narrow range; for many generations the song was virtually lost; then by
a miracle of creation, a poet, a twin-brother in the spirit to the
first, was born, who took up the forgotten poem and sang it anew with
all its original melody and force, and all the accumulated refinement of
ages of art. It seems to me idle to ask which was the greater master;
each seems greater than his work. The song is like an instrument of
precious workmanship and marvellous tone, which is worthless in common
hands, but when it falls, at long intervals, into the hands of the
supreme master, it yields a melody of transcendent enchantment to all
that have ears to hear. If we look at the sphere of influence of the
poets, there is no longer any comparison. Omar sang to a half-barbarous
province: Fitzgerald to the world. Wherever the English speech is spoken
or read, the "Rubaiyat" have taken their place as a classic. There is
not a hill post in India, nor a village in England, where there is not a
coterie to whom Omar Khayyam is a familiar friend and a bond of union.
In America he has an equal following, in many regions and conditions. In
the Eastern States his adepts form an esoteric sect; the beautiful
volume of drawings by Mr. Vedder is a centre of delight and suggestion
wherever it exists. In the cities of the West you will find the
Quatrains one of the most thoroughly read books in any club library. I
heard them quoted once in one of the most lonely and desolate spots in
the high Rockies. We had been camping on the Great Divide, our "roof of
the world," where in the space of a few feet you may see two springs,
one sending its waters to the Polar solitudes, the other to the eternal
Carib summer. One morning at sunrise, as we were breaking camp, I was
startled to hear one of our party, a frontiersman born, intoning these
words of sombre majesty:--

"Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash
Strikes, and prepares it for anoth