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The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Omar Khayyám
page 9 of 72 (12%)
How long be crying, 'Mercy on them, God!'
Why, who art Thou to teach, and He to learn?"

The Bodleian Quatrain pleads Pantheism by way of Justification.

"If I myself upon a looser Creed
Have loosely strung the Jewel of Good deed,
Let this one thing for my Atonement plead:
That One for Two I never did misread."

<5>"Since this paper was written" (adds the Reviewer in a note), "we
have met with a Copy of a very rare Edition, printed at Calcutta in
1836. This contains 438 Tetrastichs, with an Appendix containing 54
others not found in some MSS."

The Reviewer,<6> to whom I owe the Particulars of Omar's Life,
concludes his Review by comparing him with Lucretius, both as to
natural Temper and Genius, and as acted upon by the Circumstances in
which he lived. Both indeed were men of subtle, strong, and
cultivated Intellect, fine Imagination, and Hearts passionate for
Truth and Justice; who justly revolted from their Country's false
Religion, and false, or foolish, Devotion to it; but who fell short of
replacing what they subverted by such better Hope as others, with no
better Revelation to guide them, had yet made a Law to themselves.
Lucretius indeed, with such material as Epicurus furnished, satisfied
himself with the theory of a vast machine fortuitously constructed,
and acting by a Law that implied no Legislator; and so composing
himself into a Stoical rather than Epicurean severity of Attitude, sat
down to contemplate the mechanical drama of the Universe which he was
part Actor in; himself and all about him (as in his own sublime
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