18 Farvardin 1405
Quatrain 14 of 75
“The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes—or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two—is gone.”
Reflection · Spring 1405
In spring this verse arrives as counterweight to the season's natural optimism. The hopes are setting out now, fresh and white as snow, landing on everything with their transforming light. And Khayyam says: yes, and an hour or two, and gone. He is not being cruel. He is being exact. The spring hope is not less valuable for being brief — snow on a desert face is genuinely beautiful, genuinely brightening, genuinely there.
The problem is not the hope but the expectation that it will last, the failure to love it as the temporary thing it actually is. Hold your spring hopes like snow — with wonder and without clinging. Let them light the dusty face of whatever they fall on. The prospered hope and the ashes hope arrive at the same place in time; the difference is in the quality of the hour or two between beginning and gone.