PERSIAN POETRY.

IT is undoubtedly a matter of wonder to some who visit the College Library that there are so many works on subjects connected with Oriental nations, and so many translations of Oriental books, among the latest additions. But readers ought not to consider this investment of college funds as unwise, simply because there are no electives in Arabic or Persian open to either graduates or undergraduates. A university library ought to have books that a scholar will need, whatever line of study he may be pursuing. The works of Abu-1-Fazl and Mirza-Shafi, and the Arabic grammar of Muhammad bin Daud may not be of interest to the man of "general culture," - a phenomenon of which Harvard College, it is gratifying to know, is growing suspicious, - but they will certainly prove useful to the student of Turkish literature, and will be valuable to a scholar who intends travelling in the East.

Those who recognize the catholicity which the trustees of the Library have shown in the selection of books will be surprised to learn that the poems of the Persian poet, Omar Khayam, are not on its shelves. The poems of Saadi and Hafiz are there, but, notwithstanding the fact that there is an elegant English translation of this astronomer poet, none of his works can be found in the College Library except his Algebra, and a few extracts from his verses published in the North American Review.

This matter is worthy of more than ordinary comment, because Omar is, by all odds, the most advanced thinker among Persian poets, and, though he was little known outside of his own country until about ten years ago, he is now occupying a position in the literary history of the world which a recognition of his merits has won for him.

Omar Khayam, or Omar the Tent-maker, is the Horace of Persia. He was born in Khorassan, about the middle of the eleventh century of our era, and died in the year 1123. His life was passed in astronomical studies, and he probably composed his quatrains, which are bound together by no logical connection, in the intervals of his professional work.

M. Nicolas, who has made a literal translation into French, has given a mystical meaning to many of the voluptuous lines of the original; but the English poetical translation by Edward Fitzgerald, which is considered in every way the better, shows the old Persian in the light of an Epicurean and a "Materialist."

Here are some of the lines of this free-thinker of the eleventh century. They must have shocked the feelings of the Orthodox Mussulmans.

"The revelations of devout and learned

Who rose before us, and as prophets burned,

Are all but stories which, awoke from sleep,

They told their fellows, and to sleep returned."

"And that inverted bowl we call the sky,

Whereunder crawling, cooped we live and die,

Lift not your hands to it for help, - for it

As impotently rolls as you or I."

It is not surprising that Omar should have busied himself with the same problems that are occupying men's thoughts to-day, for they are the questions that men in all lands and in all ages have been trying to answer; but the remarkable fact in regard to him is, that his mind ran in the same veins, and evolved the same conclusions, as the minds of the leading philosophers and scientists of to day. It is only within a few years that theologians of established worth have been willing to admit truths in regard to the future life that the astronomer poet of Persia uttered eight centuries ago.

"I sent my soul through the invisible

Some letter of that after-life to spell;

And after many days my soul returned,

And said, 'Beheld myself am Heaven and Hell."

"Heaven but the vision of fulfilled desire,

And hell the shadow of a soul on fire,

Cast on the darkness into which ourselves,

So late emerged from, shall so soon expire."

And that was written two hundred years before "The Divine Comedy."

The man must have had a remarkable mind. He saw through the devices that men invent to conceal the transitory nature of everything on earth, and he resolved to make the most of the present. In this side of character he is thoroughly Horatian. One would fancy he was reading one of the Odes when meeting these lines : -

"Here with a little bread beneath the bough,

A flask of wine, a book of verse, - and thou

Beside me singing in the wilderness, -

O, wilderness were paradise enow."