This is poetry deathmatch.  Pistols for two and lunch for one.  Taking the great, complex, nonlinearity of art, reducing it to a binary choice and stamping it with a boot into a human face. Forever, as George would have it. That went dark in a hurry.

Omar was an amazing brain, a polymath a thousand years ago in Persia. He was a great mathematician, an astronomer, and, in his spare time, Irans most noted poet.

Edward Lear was a Victorian nonsense poet-think Lewis Carrol, and a lonely, tormented man. He suffered from chronic low self esteem and epileptic seizures of which he was bitterly ashamed.

The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it. Khayyam.

These are my all time favorite lines. The second Law of thermodynamics in verse, you can't go back.

Please, Sir, may I have some more? You will notice the form of the limerick, the person from or who, the body, then the person again. Characteristic of Lear. The modern limerick is like a joke, with a punchline:

There was a young man from Racine.

Who invented a fucking machine.

Concave or convex, it fit either sex, and had something for those in between.

To my modern ear, this is preferable. Excuse me, gotta a date with that machine. It knows what I like and does it to a precision of within .025mm.

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness-- Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

Sorry Omar, the Machine is my paradise now. This may be his most famous quatrain. Considerably more light than the last.

Much more cheering. And that, my friends, is how I learned what a runcible spoon is.

Wake! For the Sun, who scattered into flight The Stars before him from the Field of Night,    Drives Night along with them from Heav'n and strikes The Sultán's Turret with a Shaft of Light.

Thats beautiful. Sometimes we hate to get up though…but, wait, theres more.

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before The Tavern shouted--"Open, then, the Door!    You know how little while we have to stay, And, once departed, may return no more." So you can't drink in the morning until you've got up.

Mostly he’s saying carpe diem, but its in the saying.

I hate to chop up the Rubaiyat, so you should read the whole thing here. Its trully great.

All those of you poetry is only good in the original language types, anyone speak Farsi? I've read that Fitzgerald was a bit more of a co-author than a translator, any truth there?