Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

When Edward Fitzgerald translated these 11th-century Persian poems in 1859 they became something of a sensation after one admiring reader passed them on to his friends--a circle that included Browning, Rosetti, and Tennyson. Omar Khayyam was famous in his own day as a mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher, and although his mathematical studies were once hugely influential in the West, he is known to much of the world today as a poet, and his RUBAIYAT as the chief exemplar of the Arabic verse form roba'i, a poem composed in quatrains in which the first, second and fourth lines rhyme. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.