Penny Dreadfuls, 1900 · page 43 of 142
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and the Salaman and Absal of Jami — page 43: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a text page from what appears to be a Victorian-era edition of *Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam*, displaying quatrains LXIV through LXVII in English translation. The passage concerns the unknowability of death and the afterlife—no one returns from beyond "the door of Darkness" to report the way; religious revelations are merely stories told before sleep; and the speaker's soul reports that heaven and hell are projections of fulfilled or tormented desire rather than objective states. The page is formatted as poetry with ornamental borders typical of Victorian publications.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
OMAR KHAYYAM. | Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who Before us pass’d the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the Road, Which to discover we must travel too. | | | | LXV. The Revelations of Devout and Learn’d Who rose before us, and as Prophets burn’d, Are all but Stories, which, awoke from Sleep They told their comrades, and to Sleep return’d. LXVI. I sent my Soul through the Invisible, | Some letter of that After-life to spell: | And by and by my Soul return’d to me, And answer’d “I Myself am Heav’n and Hell :” LXVII. | Heay’n but the Vision of fulfill’d Desire, | And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire | Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves, So late emerg’d from, shall so soon expire. 3 17 | | | GONG DOOKSHEO