Quatrain

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Some more of Omar's Quatrains by Whitley Stokes 1.

Death I dashed my clay cup on the stone hard by.

The reckless frolic raised my heart on high.

This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Some more of Omar's Quatrains by Whitley Stokes 1.

Death I dashed my clay cup on the stone hard by.

The reckless frolic raised my heart on high.

Part one, quatrains one to twenty.

Quatrain one.

Wake! For the sun who scatter'd into flight The stars before him from the field of night, Drives night along with them from heaven, and strikes The sultan's turret with a shaft of light.

Quatrain two.

Before the phantom of false morning died, Methought a voice within the tavern cried, When all the temple is prepared within, Why nods the drowsy worshipper outside? Quatrain three.

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.

Quatrain four.

Now the new year reviving old desires, The thoughtful soul to solitude retires, Where the white hand of Moses on the bough Puts out, and Jesus from the ground suspires.

His deeper hold surfaced only in adulthood, and only years later.

Only once I had read more widely did I understand what he actually was— All that moral trespass he had poured into the strictest inherited forms of French verse—the Alexandrine, the Quatrain, the Sonnet.

Inside those orderly meters, the reader does not find the themes the form trains you to expect.

Shock is the point.

But I shall see it reanimated.

End of section Some more of Omar's Quatrains by Whitley Stokes 1.

Death I dashed my clay cup on the stone hard by.

The reckless frolic raised my heart on high.