With this verse Omar Khayyam and Edward Fitzgerald combine to construct an allegorical moral commentary via famous ancestors and a garden. Eden’s reflection is in the garden. The brevity of human existence is impressed on us. The garden seems to awaken our evolutionary logic and heighten our kinship recognition along with our sentiments and our awareness.
Then a spark;
Out of the cloud a silence,
Then a lark;
Out of the heart a rapture,
Then a pain;
Out of the dead, cold ashes,
Life again.
Perhaps there is something suggesting that a full life, a successful and a happy one,
is not completely over when the beauty of a garden evokes such pangs. Perhaps full lives
doesn’t have to be glorious or particularly noteworthy or even long.
In an early novel Mary Anne Evans - writing under the pen-name, George Eliot, wrote
“There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes.” In
her later novel Middlemarch She wrote “for the growing good of the world is partly
dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they
might have been, is half owing to the number who live faithfully a hidden life, and lie
in unvisited tombs.
Our four-year old daughter, Nancy, contemplated a bouquet of flowers she held
as we rode to her grandfather’s funeral. “Will grandpa turn into a flower?” she asked,
looking at the blooms. “Why, yes, dear, that’s a lovely thought.” replied her grandmother.
Nancy scrutinized her bouquet a minute longer and with a puzzled look, said,
“Who are all these people?”
From Reader’s Digest
Won’t you come into the garden?
I would like my roses to see you.
Richard B. Sheridan>
By: Harlan Howard and The Pozo-Seco Singers
When the quiet evening comes
And the village softly lies
Twinklling in the shadow of the mountain
When the twilight's muffled glows
Play tatoos to the skies
And the heavens close their eyes
I'll be gone.
When the fisher folds his net,
Makes his craft secure,
And gazes to the west for signs of weather
When he thinks of his table set,
His children at the door,
As he plods along the shore
I'll be gone.
When the merchant draws his shade,
Counts the days receipts,
And smiles, recalling bits of idle gossip.
When the entries all are made
In the ledger's tidy sheets
As he shuffles down the streets
I'll be gone.
’Tis pretty but t’is chains
And I must be free
So fare-thee-well ye full contented fellows
No quiet life for me, no home, no family,
Now and endlessly
I'll be gone.