Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume VII. Descriptive: Narrative. 1904. | | | | Descriptive Poems: I. Personal: Great Writers | | In a Copy of Omar Khayyám | | James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) |
| | | THESE pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, | |
| Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; | |
| The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, | |
| Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread. | |
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| Fit rosary for a queen, in shape and hue, | 5 |
| When Contemplation tells her pensive beads | |
| Of mortal thoughts, forever old and new. | |
| Fit for a queen? Why, surely then for you! | |
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| The moral? Where Doubt’s eddies toss and twirl | |
| Faith’s slender shallop till her footing reel, | 10 |
| Plunge: if you find not peace beneath the whirl, | |
| Groping, you may like Omar grasp a pearl. | | | | |
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