CAMELOT FANTASIES

Awesome poem there Anne.


thanks for sharing. keep them coming.

Music notes,
     Make rhythms round,
Melodic tunes,
     The souls true sound.
Takes spirits off,
     On memories track-
Breifly, as if -
     To heaven & back.
But the songs that move one,
May not - another.
But we are not,
     Unlike each other.
For each persons vibration,
     It varies a bit-
And seeks a sound,
     To resonate with.
But there's no doubt,
     A magic's there-
When songs of Love,
     Do dance on air.

wow. a fascinating poem.



you are really a very creative mind Anne. well done.


and welcome again to Camelot.


thanks for being a valued member of a very special Camelot family.

Your poems are lovely. I see pictures as I read. Good stuff.

Thank you! ♡ I'm so glad you enjoyed this poem!

I enjoyed all of them and I'm not really a poem person. Most of them are too unrealistic t, but yours are based more on realistic scenarios that a person can relate to. They have great imagery. You are very talented.

http://emotional-literacy-education.com/classic-books-online-a/rubai10.htm



This the complex work of Omar Khaymam that is translated by Edward Fitzgerald.

It is fascinating and sublime poetry. It is quite long so I will post it in several posts:






The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam
 by Edward Fitzgerald
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
 from the Encyclopedia of the Self
 by Mark Zimmerman



 Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Rendered into English Verse by Edward Fitzgerald

Contents:

  Introduction.
   First Edition.
   Fifth Edition.
   Notes.

Introduction

Omar Khayyam,
 The Astronomer-Poet of Persia.

Omar Khayyam was born at Naishapur in Khorassan in the latter half of
 our Eleventh, and died within the First Quarter of our Twelfth
 Century. The Slender Story of his Life is curiously twined about that
 of two other very considerable Figures in their Time and Country: one
 of whom tells the Story of all Three. This was Nizam ul Mulk, Vizier
 to Alp Arslan the Son, and Malik Shah the Grandson, of Toghrul Beg the
 Tartar, who had wrested Persia from the feeble Successor of Mahmud the
 Great, and founded that Seljukian Dynasty which finally roused Europe
 into the Crusades. This Nizam ul Mulk, in his Wasiyat--or
 Testament--which he wrote and left as a Memorial for future
 Statesmen--relates the following, as quoted in the Calcutta Review,
 No. 59, from Mirkhond's History of the Assassins.

"'One of the greatest of the wise men of Khorassan was the Imam
 Mowaffak of Naishapur, a man highly honored and reverenced,--may God
 rejoice his soul; his illustrious years exceeded eighty-five, and it
 was the universal belief that every boy who read the Koran or studied
 the traditions in his presence, would assuredly attain to honor and
happiness. For this cause did my father send me from Tus to Naishapur
 with Abd-us-samad, the doctor of law, that I might employ myself in
 study and learning under the guidance of that illustrious teacher.
 Towards me he ever turned an eye of favor and kindness, and as his
 pupil I felt for him extreme affection and devotion, so that I passed
 four years in his service. When I first came there, I found two other
 pupils of mine own age newly arrived, Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-
 fated Ben Sabbah. Both were endowed with sharpness of wit and the
 highest natural powers; and we three formed a close friendship
 together. When the Imam rose from his lectures, they used to join me,
 and we repeated to each other the lessons we had heard. Now Omar was
 a native of Naishapur, while Hasan Ben Sabbah's father was one Ali, a
 man of austere life and practise, but heretical in his creed and
 doctrine. One day Hasan said to me and to Khayyam, "It is a universal
 belief that the pupils of the Imam Mowaffak will attain to fortune.
 Now, even if we all do not attain thereto, without doubt one of us
 will; what then shall be our mutual pledge and bond?"  We answered,
 "Be it what you please."  "Well," he said, "let us make a vow, that to
 whomsoever this fortune falls, he shall share it equally with the
rest, and reserve no pre-eminence for himself."  "Be it so," we both
 replied, and on those terms we mutually pledged our words. Years
 rolled on, and I went from Khorassan to Transoxiana, and wandered to
 Ghazni and Cabul; and when I returned, I was invested with office, and
 rose to be administrator of affairs during the Sultanate of Sultan Alp
 Arslan.'

"He goes on to state, that years passed by, and both his old school-
 friends found him out, and came and claimed a share in his good
 fortune, according to the school-day vow. The Vizier was generous and
 kept his word. Hasan demanded a place in the government, which the
 Sultan granted at the Vizier's request; but discontented with a
 gradual rise, he plunged into the maze of intrigue of an oriental
 court, and, failing in a base attempt to supplant his benefactor, he
 was disgraced and fell. After many mishaps and wanderings, Hasan
 became the head of the Persian sect of the Ismailians,--a party of
 fanatics who had long murmured in obscurity, but rose to an evil
 eminence under the guidance of his strong and evil will. In A.D.
 1090, he seized the castle of Alamut, in the province of Rudbar, which
 lies in the mountainous tract south of the Caspian Sea; and it was
 from this mountain home he obtained that evil celebrity among the
 Crusaders as the OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS, and spread terror through
 the Mohammedan world; and it is yet disputed where the word Assassin,
 which they have left in the language of modern Europe as their dark
 memorial, is derived from the hashish, or opiate of hemp-leaves (the
 Indian bhang), with which they maddened themselves to the sullen pitch
 of oriental desperation, or from the name of the founder of the
 dynasty, whom we have seen in his quiet collegiate days, at Naishapur.
 One of the countless victims of the Assassin's dagger was Nizam ul
 Mulk himself, the old school-boy friend.<1>
 

<2>Though all these, like our Smiths, Archers, Millers, Fletchers,
   etc., may simply retain the Surname of an hereditary calling.

"We have only one more anecdote to give of his Life, and that relates
 to the close; it is told in the anonymous preface which is sometimes
 prefixed to his poems; it has been printed in the Persian in the
 Appendix to Hyde's Veterum Persarum Religio, p. 499; and D'Herbelot
 alludes to it in his Bibliotheque, under Khiam.<3>--

"'It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that this King of
 the Wise, Omar Khayyam, died at Naishapur in the year of the Hegira,
 517 (A.D. 1123); in science he was unrivaled,--the very paragon of his
 age. Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, who was one of his pupils, relates
 the following story: "I often used to hold conversations with my
 teacher, Omar Khayyam, in a garden; and one day he said to me,
 'My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses
 over it.'  I wondered at the words he spake, but I knew that his were
 no idle words.<4>  Years after, when I chanced to revisit Naishapur, I
 went to his final resting-place, and lo! it was just outside a garden,
 and trees laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden
 wall, and dropped their flowers upon his tomb, so that the stone was
 hidden under them."'"

  <3>"Philosophe Musulman qui a vecu en Odeur de Saintete dans sa
   Religion, vers la Fin du premier et le Commencement du second
   Siecle," no part of which, except the "Philosophe," can apply to our
   Khayyam.
   
   <4>The Rashness of the Words, according to D'Herbelot, consisted in
   being so opposed to those in the Koran: "No Man knows where he shall
   die."--This story of Omar reminds me of another so naturally--and
   when one remembers how wide of his humble mark the noble sailor
   aimed--so pathetically told by Captain Cook--not by Doctor
   Hawkworth--in his Second Voyage (i. 374). When leaving Ulietea,
   "Oreo's last request was for me to return. When he saw he could not
   obtain that promise, he asked the name of my Marai (burying-place).
   As strange a question as this was, I hesitated not a moment to tell
   him 'Stepney'; the parish in which I live when in London. I was
   made to repeat it several times over till they could pronounce it;
   and then 'Stepney Marai no Toote' was echoed through an hundred
   mouths at once. I afterwards found the same question had been put
   to Mr. Forster by a man on shore; but he gave a different, and
   indeed more proper answer, by saying, 'No man who used the sea could
   say where he should be buried.'"

Thus far--without fear of Trespass--from the Calcutta Review. The
 writer of it, on reading in India this story of Omar's Grave, was
 reminded, he says, of Cicero's Account of finding Archimedes' Tomb at
 Syracuse, buried in grass and weeds. I think Thorwaldsen desired to
 have roses grow over him; a wish religiously fulfilled for him to the
 present day, I believe. However, to return to Omar.

Though the Sultan "shower'd Favors upon him," Omar's Epicurean
 Audacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in
 his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especially hated
 and dreaded by the Sufis, whose Practise he ridiculed, and whose Faith
 amounts to little more than his own, when stript of the Mysticism and
 formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide. Their
 Poets, including Hafiz, who are (with the exception of Firdausi) the
 most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar's
 material, but turning it to a mystical Use more convenient to
Themselves and the People they addressed; a People quite as quick of
Doubt as of Belief; as keen of Bodily sense as of Intellectual; and
 delighting in a cloudy composition of both, in which they could float
 luxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this World and the Next, on
 the wings of a poetical expression, that might serve indifferently for
 either. Omar was too honest of Heart as well of Head for this.
 Having failed (however mistakenly) of finding any Providence but
 Destiny, and any World but This, he set about making the most of it;
 preferring rather to soothe the Soul through the Senses into
 Acquiescence with Things as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain
 disquietude after what they might be. It has been seen, however, that
 his Worldly Ambition was not exorbitant; and he very likely takes a
 humorous or perverse pleasure in exalting the gratification of Sense
 above that of the Intellect, in which he must have taken great
 delight, although it failed to answer the Questions in which he, in
 common with all men, was most vitally interested.

For whatever Reason, however, Omar as before said, has never been
 popular in his own Country, and therefore has been but scantily
 transmitted abroad. The MSS. of his Poems, mutilated beyond the
 average Casualties of Oriental Transcription, are so rare in the East
 as scarce to have reacht Westward at all, in spite of all the
 acquisitions of Arms and Science. There is no copy at the India
 House, none at the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris. We know but of
 one in England: No. 140 of the Ouseley MSS. at the Bodleian, written
 at Shiraz, A.D. 1460. This contains but 158 Rubaiyat. One in the
 Asiatic Society's Library at Calcutta (of which we have a Copy),
 contains (and yet incomplete) 516, though swelled to that by all kinds
 of Repetition and Corruption. So Von Hammer speaks of his Copy as
 containing about 200, while Dr. Sprenger catalogues the Lucknow MS. at
 double that number.<5>  The Scribes, too, of the Oxford and Calcutta
 MSS. seem to do their Work under a sort of Protest; each beginning
 with a Tetrastich (whether genuine or not), taken out of its
 alphabetical order; the Oxford with one of Apology; the Calcutta with
 one of Expostulation, supposed (says a Notice prefixed to the MS.)
 to have arisen from a Dream, in which Omar's mother asked about his
 future fate. It may be rendered thus:--

"O Thou who burn'st in Heart for those who burn
   In Hell, whose fires thyself shall feed in turn,
     How long be crying, 'Mercy on them, God!'
   Why, who art Thou to teach, and He to learn?"

The Bodleian Quatrain pleads Pantheism by way of Justification.

"If I myself upon a looser Creed
   Have loosely strung the Jewel of Good deed,
   Let this one thing for my Atonement plead:
   That One for Two I never did misread."

  <5>"Since this paper was written" (adds the Reviewer in a note), "we
   have met with a Copy of a very rare Edition, printed at Calcutta in
   1836. This contains 438 Tetrastichs, with an Appendix containing 54
   others not found in some MSS."

The Reviewer,<6> to whom I owe the Particulars of Omar's Life,
 concludes his Review by comparing him with Lucretius, both as to
 natural Temper and Genius, and as acted upon by the Circumstances in
 which he lived. Both indeed were men of subtle, strong, and
 cultivated Intellect, fine Imagination, and Hearts passionate for
Truth and Justice; who justly revolted from their Country's false
 Religion, and false, or foolish, Devotion to it; but who fell short of
 replacing what they subverted by such better Hope as others, with no
 better Revelation to guide them, had yet made a Law to themselves.
 Lucretius indeed, with such material as Epicurus furnished, satisfied
himself with the theory of a vast machine fortuitously constructed,
 and acting by a Law that implied no Legislator; and so composing
himself into a Stoical rather than Epicurean severity of Attitude, sat
 down to contemplate the mechanical drama of the Universe which he was
 part Actor in; himself and all about him (as in his own sublime
 description of the Roman Theater) discolored with the lurid reflex of
 the Curtain suspended between the Spectator and the Sun. Omar, more
 desperate, or more careless of any so complicated System as resulted
 in nothing but hopeless Necessity, flung his own Genius and Learning
 with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Ruin which their
 insufficient glimpses only served to reveal; and, pretending sensual
pleasure, as the serious purpose of Life, only diverted himself with
 speculative problems of Deity, Destiny, Matter and Spirit, Good and
 Evil, and other such questions, easier to start than to run down, and
 the pursuit of which becomes a very weary sport at last!