![]() ![]() WAKE! For the Sun, who scatter’d into flight The Stars before him from the Field of Night, Drives Night along with them from Heav’n, and strikes The Sultan’s Turret with a Shaft of Light. Many of the changes Fitzgerald introduced in subsequent editions are quite significant, as can be seen in this comparison of two versions of Verse 1:Īwake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight: And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light. Fitzgerald revised “The Rubaiyat” four times after its first publication, so that there exist five published editions of the poem. Some critics consider “The Rubaiyat” as a standalone poem inspired by the original Persian verse, rather than a transcreation. It is useful to consider Fitzgerald’s “The Rubaiyat” partly as a work of English literature, since his translation is extremely free and creative. ![]() From thereon, “The Rubaiyat” had a meteoric rise in popularity, becoming one of the most-quoted poems in English by the early 20th century. However, poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) discovered the poem in 1860 and played a significant role in popularizing it. Fitzgerald, a friend of Victorian poets like Alfred Tennyson (1809-1902), was considered only a minor literary figure at the time. When “The Rubaiyat” was first published in March 1859, it received little attention. ![]()
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