the original than one would gather from FitzGerald; and though, after Oriental fashion, woman was merely an interlude in Omar's life, a pet, a plaything, there are several quatrains which breathe quite a modern intensity of passion. That Omar sometimes made use of wine and women as symbols of his mystical philosophy is, doubtless, true; but that he more often made a simpler use of them is, happily, still more certain—for Omar was, emphatically, a poet who found his ideal in the real.
As it proved impracticable to give even such random continuity to these love-verses, as I have attempted in the body of the poem, I have made use of them as an intermezzo, a device of arrangement which is appropriate as suggesting the intercalary importance of women in the life of the great thinker-drinker—as though, in some pause of his grave or humourous argument, he should turn to caress the little moon at his side.
WAGGONER'S WELLS, HIND HEAD, SURREY.
17
