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A collection of about one thousand four-line stanzas, or quatrains, that explore the meaning of life and man's love for women, wine, wisdom, wealth and the cosmos, Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám is the definitive and best known translation original of the original Persian. Summary of the Book Omar Khayyám's collection of verses follows his journey through a day. At first what seems like an ode to wine and women, the poem turns towards the world and philosophy kicks in. In its four line stanzas which rhythmically rhyme thanks to FitzGerald's translation, the Rubaiyat examines man's partiality for the finer life and through it he shows that there is only one message. Seize the hour for there is only now. Tomorrow is too late. In words immortal Omar Khayyám returns to us and sings of the life eternal, of roses, of wine seductive, of drunken friends and the women who entice us with their wiles. Readers lose themselves to Omar Khayyám's philosophy which finds Sufi philosophies in the bottle and life in the drunken stupor beyond. About the Authors Edward FitzGerald was an English Poet and writer. He is best remembered for his translation of Omar Khaiyyam's works, the definitive version. A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, he was well-acquainted with several contemporaries such as Alfred Tennyson, William Makepeace Thackeray and William Hepworth Thompson. Omar Khayyám was a Persian polymath, mathematician, philosopher, poet and astronomer. His Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra is considered one of the groundbreaking treatises on algebra of his time. He has been immortalized through the quatrains for which he is widely regarded as the best poet out of the Middle East of all time.