Crete, Greece - 2006
1. "A hair divides what is false and true."
2. “Ah, fill the Cup:--what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!”
3. “Ah Love! could you and I with him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire
Would we not shatter it to bits--and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire?”
4. “A Book of Verses undeneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness-
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!"
5. “A Moment's Halt--a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste--
And, Lo! the phantom Caravan has reach'd
The Nothing it set our from. Oh, make haste!”
6. “And this I know; whether the one True Light
Kindle to Love, or Wrath consume me quite,
One flash of it within the Tavern caught
Better than in the temple lost outright.”
7. “But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Checker-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.”
8. “Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly--and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.”
“For in and out, above, about, below, / ‘Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show, / Play'd in a Box whose / Candle is the Sun, / Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.”
9. “Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire.
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire.”
10. “I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”
11. “I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.”
12. “Man is a cup, his soul the wine therein, / Flesh is a pipe, spirit the voice within; / O Khayyam, have you fanthomed what man is? / A magic lantern with a light therein.”
13. “One thing is certain and the rest is lies:
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.”
14. “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
15. “There was the Door to which I found no key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see.”
16. “Think, in the batter'd Caravanserai
Whose portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his destin'd Hour and went his way.”
17. “T'is but a Tent where takes his one day's rest
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest.
A Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash
Strikes, and prepares it for another Guest.”
18. "'Tis all a Checker-board of Nights and days where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates and slays, and one by one back in the Closet lays."
19. “Tomorrow's fate, though thou be wise,
Thou canst not tell, nor yet surmise:
Pass, therefore, not today in vain,
For it will never come again.”
20. “We are no other than a moving row
Of visionary Shapes that come and go
Round with this Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show.”
