born. He lived and died at Naishápúr, following the trade of a
tent-maker, acquiring knowledge of every available kind, but with
astronomy for his special study. His famous poem, the _Rubáiyát_, was
first seen by Fitzgerald in 1856 and published in 1868. So great was the
sensation produced in England by the innovating sage, that in 1895 the
Omar Kayyám Club was founded by Professor Clodd, and that club has since
come to be considered "the blue ribbon of literary associations."

In Omar's time Persian poetry was in the hands of the Súfis, or
religious teachers of Persia. He found them writing verses which
professed to be mystical and spiritual, but which might sometimes be
suspected of earthlier meanings lurking beneath the pantheistic veil. It
was against the poetry of such Súfis that Omar Kayyám rose in revolt.
Loving frankness and truth, he threw all disguises aside, and became the
exponent of materialistic epicureanism naked and unashamed.

A fair specimen of the finest Súfi poetry is _The Rose Garden of Sa'di_,
which it may be convenient to quote because of its easy accessibility in
English translation. Sa'di also was a twelfth-century poet, although of
a later time than Omar. He was a student of the College in Baghdad, and
he lived as a hermit for sixty years in Shiraz, singing of love and war.
His mind is full of mysticism, wisdom and beauty going hand in hand
through a dim twilight land. Dominating all his thought is the primary
conviction that the soul is essentially part of God, and will return to
God again, and meanwhile is always revealing, in mysterious hints and
half-conscious visions, its divine source and destiny. Here and there
you will find the deep fatalism of the East, as in the lines--

"Fate will not alter for a thousand sighs,
Nor prayers importunate, nor hopeless cries.