Though few translations have had as much impact as Edward Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, anyone who wishes to truly appreciate Omar Khayyam needs to read more than one translation. This volume contains Edward Fitzgerald's classic translation with all its variations, Justin McCarthy's elegant and mystical literal translation and Richard Le Gallienne's sharp and poetic version. For the first time the reader can appreciate the range of Omar Khayyam and his interpreters in a single volume."

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - In the dark main room of the Fircone Tavern the warm June air seemed to have lost all its delicacy, like a degraded angel. It was sodden through and through, as with the lees of wine; it was stained and shamed with the smells of hams and cheeses; it was thick and heavy as if with the breaths of all the rogues and all the vagabonds that had haunted the hostelry from its evil dawn. Such guttering lights and glimmering flames as lit...

Justin McCarthy spins a tale of love centering on the famous poet Dante Alighieri. The story begins, "I shall begin, with the favor and permission of Heaven, where I think the business may rightly be said to begin. The time was a May morning, the morning of May-day, warm and bright with sunlight, one of those mornings which makes a clod seem like a poet and a poet seem like a god. The place was the Piazza Santa Felicita, with the Arno flowing pretty full and freely now between its borders of mud. I can see it all as I write, as I saw it yesterday, that yesterday so many years ago when Lappo...