atcher of the skies,
When a new planet swims into his ken."

The exquisite beauty, the faultless form, the singular grace of those
amazing stanzas, were not more wonderful than the depth and breadth of
their profound philosophy, their knowledge of life, their dauntless
courage, their serene facing of the ultimate problems of life and of
death.

Of course the doubt did not spare me, which has assailed many as
ignorant as I was of the literature of the East, whether it was the poet
or his translator to whom was due this splendid result. Was it, in fact,
a reproduction of a new song, or a mystification of a great modern,
careless of fame and scornful of his time? Could it be possible that in
the eleventh century, so far away as Khorassan, so accomplished a man of
letters lived, with such distinction, such breadth, such insight, such
calm disillusion, such cheerful and jocund despair? Was this
Weltschmerz, which we thought a malady of our day, endemic in Persia in
1100? My doubt lasted only till I came upon a literal translation of the
Rubaiyat, and I saw that not the least remarkable quality of
Fitzgerald's was its fidelity to the original. In short, Omar was a
Fitzgerald before the latter, or Fitzgerald was a reincarnation of Omar.
It is not to the disadvantage of the later poet that he followed so
closely in the footsteps of the earlier. A man of extraordinary genius
had appeared in the world; had sung a song of incomparable beauty and
power in an environment no longer worthy of him, in a language of narrow
range; for many generations the song was virtually lost; then by a
miracle of creation, a poet, a twin-brother in the spirit to the first,
was born, who took up the forgotten poem and sung it anew with all its
original melody and force, and all the accumulated refinement of ages of
art. [Cheers.]

It seems to me idle to ask which was the greater master; each seems
greater than his work. The song is like an instrument of precious
workmanship and marvellous tone, which is worthless in common hands, but
when it falls, at long intervals, into the hands of the supreme master,
it yields a melody of transcendent enchantment to all that have ears to
hear. If we look at the sphere of influence of the two poets there is no
longer any comparison. Omar sang to a half barbarous province;
Fitzgerald to the world. Wherever the English speech is spoken or read,
the Rubaiyat have taken their place as a classic. There is not a
hi