The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Jr.


Translated from the Original Bornese into English Verse by
Wallace Irwin
author of "The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum,"



with eight illustrations and cover design by
Gelett Burgess




Introduction



Since the publication of Edward Fitzgerald's classic translation of the
Rubaiyat in 1851 - or rather since its general popularity several years
later - poets minor and major have been rendering the sincerest form of
flattery to the genius of the Irishman who brought Persia into the best
regulated families. Unfortunately there was only one Omar and there were
scores of imitators who, in order to make the Astronomer go round, were
obliged to draw him out to the thinness of Balzac's Magic Skin. While
all this was going on, the present Editor was forced to conclude that
the burning literary need was not for more translators, but for more
Omars to translate; and what was his surprise to note that the work of a
later and superior Omar Khayyam was lying undiscovered in the wilds of