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    Austin's Rubaiyat: The Text
    Austin's Rubaiyat: The Text
    Austin's Rubaiyat: The Text
    Ebook98 pages1 hour

    Austin's Rubaiyat: The Text

    By Austin P. Torney

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    About this ebook

    This edition contains the text of all my quatrains, about 650, as selected from Today's Rubaiyat and my other books. Inspired by Omar, I have endeavored to capture his spirit for more modern times, although I have surely been influenced by Edward FitzGerald's translated gems.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAustin P. Torney
    Release dateOct 29, 2014
    ISBN9781310428050
    Austin's Rubaiyat: The Text
    Author

    Austin P. Torney

    Austin began writing for real around the age of forty, a respite from working as an Information Engineer in the field of Computer Science, doing programming, an art, as it turned out. He calls himself a humanist, and is one who enjoys the liberal arts, utilizing science, for it pervades every discipline. He is currently retired and lives in the mountains of Poughquag, NY, near the Appalachian Trail. He enjoys tennis, writing, fun, humor, thinking, sleeping, poetry, music, dining, travel, romance, reading, swimming, and life.

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      Book preview

      Austin's Rubaiyat - Austin P. Torney

      Prologue

      This edition contains all my rubaiyat-style quatrains, as selected from Today’s Rubaiyat and my other books. Inspired by Omar, I have endeavored to capture his spirit for more modern times, although I have surely been influenced by Edward FitzGerald’s translated gems.

      There is a companion prose version, ‘The Triumph of Life, Love, and Being’, in which a loving couple take a long, picaresque journey through the countryside to explore the joys and follies of the human condition, living out the quatrains.

      The Discovery

      Long before I’d ever heard of Omar Khayyàm, I had come to some of the same conclusions as had he, or so my friend told me one day, saying that I was already living out and proving Omar’s philosophy.

      Amazed that I hadn’t heard of Omar, my friend gave me a copy of The Rubàiyàt, one of those charming small-sized editions from the late 1800’s. Of course, The Rubàiyàt struck a chord in me which was already resonating to Omar’s frequency, so I read it cover to cover several times, with both wonderment and amazement.

      The Insight

      As the years went by, I found other Rubaiyat editions and began collecting them. At the same time, I began writing down some experiences of my own, most of which I had either lived through or had seen through the eyes of my friends.

      It eventually occurred to me that I could write my own set of quatrains. Somehow, inexplicably, the verses came to me, as I lived through all the experiences described.

      The Human Condition

      My quatrains, like Omar’s, aim into the heart of life’s dilemmas, offering simple, common sense solutions. In this hectic, complicated world of ours, we often forget that it is the simple things in life that are still the most enjoyable and inexpensive.

      Some may read my quatrains but immediately revert back to old habits, for change is not an easy thing. Please try. Likewise, the spirit of Omar’s heady Persia-fume has reached me across the centuries, and has overtaken me unaware, inspiring me to live and write, in that order.

      Illuminations

      There are new quatrains too, obtained from my other books of Elfin Legends, Worldly Love, Austino’s Holy Quest, To the Depths of the Deep, After the Stars Are Gone—The Final, Silent Dark, All That Lies Between, Parmenides’ Unity in Multiplicity, Brain Waves, Into the Land of the Gods, humor, and more, which poems can be found, in their entirety, in Epic Thoughts: The Best Of.

      Edward and Omar

      Edward FitzGerald was among the first to translate Omar’s Rubáiyát from the Persian into English, and he rather loosely paraphrased it; however, he caught its spirit and even improved upon it. In translation, one cannot preserve literal meaning, rhyme, rhythm, and meter; therefore, what is left has to be enhanced and rearranged until everything fits.

      Fortunately, Edward FitzGerald was sufficiently overtaken by Omar’s fumes wafting across the centuries, and so he went on through the language barrier to recondense the Persia-fumes and redistill them into a Victorian age masterpiece.

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      Rubaiyat

      Above us, the branches slowly sway, and fan

      Away the little creatures that try to land.

      The trickling waters play tinkling lullabies,

      While flocks of returning geese fly the skies.

      I caress her tresses, in romantic rhythm,

      To the contented sighs she sends toward Heaven.

      We slumber where the grass fledges the stream,

      Half-awake or asleep in love’s peaceful dream.

      I fear not death, Heaven, or even Hell,

      For death is only life’s natural knell,

      And Heaven and Hell are within the self;

      The one thing I fear is not living well!

      Breathe in all that’s good, breathe out all that’s bad;

      Peace flows into you—it’s warm, wet, and glad.

      Feel it spread throughout the body, then say,

      This is the best life that I’ve ever had!

      Life is a web, of whos, whys, whats, and hows,

      Stretched in time between eternal boughs.

      Gossamer threads bear the beads that glisten,

      Each moment a sequence of instant nows.

      The soul to solitude does oft retire,

      When the noise of life sets the nerves on fire.

      Here the rhythmic songs of nature inspire;

      One senses the vibrance of the inner choir.

      Come light your lantern and mine with good cheer;

      We’re magic lamps; our spirits dance in there.

      Our beginnings and ends are of nowhere,

      So let’s radiate, since for now we’re here!

      Good and evil were wrought from wrong and right,

      When, of nought, twin genii split day and night.

      Some may think that black’s might can vanquish white,

      But night can’t even quench the smallest light!

      Why is Earth for human life so perfect

      But billions of other worlds so unfit?

      Well if this world wasn’t right for life, then

      We wouldn’t be here to ask about it!

      At first, we sleep in our dear mother’s womb;

      At last, we sleep in the cold silent tomb.

      In between, Life whispers a dream that says,

      Wake, live, for the rose withers all too soon!

      The light of Heav’n did the Earth illumine,

      When He shaped human nature’s acumen.

      Temptations He then placed everywhere,

      But He’ll punish us for being human!

      In the night, lies the healthy breath of morn;

      The giant oak sleeps within the acorn;

      The flower waits for spring inside the seed;

      So too in a daydream is

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