Wednesday 3 June 2020

"Beside Me Singing"

See "Would God I Were..."

We have copied from the Rubaiyat before. I am now typing above the stanza that I have copied in this post because, having copied it, the laptop will not let me type below it. A Maths teacher at school told us that the "Thou beside me..." was not a person but some kind of mathematical table.

"Beside me singing in the wilderness."


  A BOOK of Verses underneath the Bough, 
  A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou 
  Beside me singing in the Wilderness— 
  O, Wilderness were Paradise enow! -copied from here.        

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

That bit from Omar Khayyam about the "Jug of wine" reminded me of how, for a long time, Islam was only a light veneer on a Muslim conquered Iran, with frequent revolts against Muslim rule. So for Iranians to persist in drinking wine might well have been a gesture of defiance against a foreign faith.

Ad astra! Sean