Showing posts with label Dubai. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dubai. Show all posts

Sunday, 21 January 2024

Omar Khayyam


1967: Omar Khayyam - Poet and Philosopher

Arab and Persian miniatures and woodcuts illustrating the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. 

As can be seen the sheet is incomplete, missing tabs and selvedges. In the English speaking world the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is most familiar (and quotable) in the translation by Edward Fitzgerald first published in 1859.  Dubai issued the sheetlets in four languages, English, Arabic, French and German.

The missing quatrains tabs on the top include the two that are most often quoted - Left to Right: -

The moving finger writes, and having writ,/Moves on: not all thy Piety and Wit/Shall lure it back to cancel half a line/Not all they Tears wash out a Word of it

Here with a little Bread beneath the Bough,/ A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou/ Beside me singing in the Wilderness -/Oh Wilderness were Paradise enow!

So while the Vessels one by one were speaking,/One spied the little Crescent all were seeking;/And then they jogg'd each other, "Brother! Brother!/Hark to the Porter's Shoulder-knot a creaking!"

Sunday Stamps theme this week is - Poets and Writers - read more at See It On A Postcard