The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

The classic translation of the Persian mathematician Omar Khayyam's poetry by Edward Fitzgerald has become a feature of the educated world since it was first published in the mid-19th century. Its classic quatrains hold an otherworldly beauty that brings to light the vagaries of the human condition, the nature of fate, mortality and uncertainty. Fitzgerald's spectacular translation contains some of the most haunting and magnificent lines in the English language.