Penny Dreadfuls, 1900 · page 58 of 142
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and the Salaman and Absal of Jami — page 58: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a notes page from what appears to be an annotated edition of poetry (likely Edward FitzGerald's *Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam*). The page contains scholarly annotations explaining references in the text, including a discussion of mathematical imagery comparing Omar Khayyam's compass metaphor with a parallel passage from John Donne's poetry. The notes also briefly explain allusions to religious divisions and Sultan Mahmud's conquest of India. The page is primarily running prose with embedded verse quotations, formatted as explanatory endnotes rather than the main literary text.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ae NOTES. a - === + = This, and the two following Stanzas would have been with- drawn, as somewhat de trop, from the Text, but for advice which I least like to disregard. (LI.) From Méh to Mahi; from Fish to Moon. (LVI.) A Jest, of course, at his Studies. A curious mathe- matical Quatrain of Omar's has been pointed out to me; the more curious because almost exactly parallel’d by some Verses of Doctor Donne’s, that are quoted in Izaak Walton’s Lives! Here is Omar: ‘You and I are the image of a pair of compasses ; though we have two heads (sc. our feet) we have one body ; when we have fixed the centre for our circle, we bring our heads (sc. feet) together at the end.’’ Dr. Donne: If we be two, we two are so As stiff twin-compasses are two ; Thy Soul, the fixt foot, makes no show To move, but coes if the other do. And though thine in the centre sit, Yet when my other far does roam, Thine leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect aS mine comes home. Such thou must be to me, who must Like the other foot obliquely run ; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And me to end where I begun. (LIX.) The Seventy-two Religicns supposed to divide the World, including Islamism, as some think : but others not. (LX.) Alluding to Sultan Mahmiud’s Conquest of India and its dark people. OOO ”’ com So! CO)