Lo! Some we loved, the loveliest and the best Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day,Ībode his Hour or two, then went his way. Or Haitim Tai cry Supper - heed them not. To fly - and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.īut come with old Khayyam, and leave the Lot Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to flight Īnd Lo! the Hunter of the East has caughtĬome fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,Ī Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou The drawing before its translation into an etching, an original print of which is included in each copy of this book as part of the limitation of 1,000 copies.

The next picture is a photograph which shows this better. The colours are in fact gold, silver, and copper rather than yellow, orange and white.

The scan of course loses the metallic appearance of the original. It is done, however, and if nothing else, I didn't repeat the motif again. Elsewhere in the poem, any mention of 'I' can be interpreted as a kind of 'everyman', but where Fitzgerald chose to use Khayyam's name, the wisest thing to have done might have been to omit any visual representation of him altogether, as it's in fact immaterial to the spirit of the quatrain and the poem as a whole. Quatrain 48 is the one illustration in which I have tried to depict 'old Khayyam', a decision which even now I'm still unsure about, as it presents rather a number of problems. The illustration for quatrain 9 really properly illustrates just the third line, 'Let Rustam lay about him as he will', rather than interprets the sense of the quatrain as a whole but it gave me the opportunity to depict the Persian hero, Rustam, from an episode of the Shahnameh in which he fights the dragon. I felt that it might serve for the metaphorical 'bird of time' of the quatrain. In some variations of its legends, it is said, like the phoenix, to consume itself in flames and rise again. In quatrain 7 is my depiction of the Huma bird, a creature of fortune who bestows kingship and flies without ever coming to rest. Quatrains 7 and 9 were where I did a bit of informed 'cheating' and drew on Persian mythology in creating the illustrations. There are some production details such as the actual binding and the decorative borders which are best seen on/in the book itself, and as soon as I have my copies, I will photograph those.Ī few notes regarding some of the illustrations: I still don't have my copies of the book yet (I was still signing and numbering the last of the etchings last week). I personally think that a number of these are among my best work so far.

Please be advised that this is an image-intensive post, and there's a considerable deal of text, too. HimmapaanAs promised, here are all my illustrations for the Rubáiyát.