Omar Khayyam

by Frank Dempster Sherman

At Naishápúr his ashes lie
O'ershadowed by the mosque's blue dome;
There folded in his tent of sky
The star of Persia sleeps at home.

The Rose her buried Nightingale
Remembers, faithful all these years;
Around his grave the winds exhale
The fragrant sorrow of her tears.

Sultans and slaves in caravans
Since Malik Shah have gone their way,
And ridges in the Kubberstans
Are their memorials to-day.

But from the dust in Omar's tomb
A Fakir has revived a Rose,
Perchance the old, ancestral bloom
Of that one by the mosque which blows;

And from its petals he has caught
The inspiration Omar knew,
Who from the stars his wisdom brought, --
A Persian Rose that drank the dew.

The Fakir now in dust lies low
With Omar of the Orient;
Fitzgerald, shall we call him? No:
'T was Omar in the Occident!