Fitzgerald, Edward
Edward (1809-1883), an English poet and translator. He was born near Woodbridge, Suffolk. His education was received at Cambridge. While at college he formed a life-long friendship with Thackeray. Later friends were Carlyle, Tennyson, and George Crabbe, son of the poet of that name. It is interesting to note that, while Fitzgerald and Tennyson were close friends, Fitzgerald was exceedingly frank in his criticisms of Tennyson's poems. For the most part he did not like them as well as might have been expected. Crabbe was Fitzgerald's favorite poet. Fitzgerald passed the retired and uneventful life of a student and man of letters. His recreations were boating and gardening. His writings include Euphranor, a Dialogue on Youth, Polonius, a Collection of Wise Saws and Modern Instances, Six Dramas of Colderon, translations from Aeschylus and Sophocles, and his most celebrated work, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Omar Khayyam (O'mar khiyam') was a Persian poet and astronomer who died early in the twelfth century. The word Rubaiyat signifies quatrains or four line stanzas. The Rubaiyat is the best known example of Persian literature. A few stanzas of the poem will give an idea of the style:
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
Today of past Regret and future Fears:
Tomorrow!--Why, Tomorrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.
There was the Veil through which I might not see:
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was,--and then no more of Thee and Me.
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answer'd, "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell."
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
Lowell wrote a poem, In a Copy of Omar Khayyam, of which the first stanza runs:
Each softly lucent as a rounded moon;
The diver Omar plucked them from their bed,
Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.
See Omar Khayyam