21 Farvardin 1405
Quatrain 17 of 75
“They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahram, that great Hunter—the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, and he lies fast asleep.”
Reflection · Spring 1405
They say — and this casual attribution is deliberate. Khayyam does not claim to have stood in Jamshyd's ruins himself. He passes on the information with the equanimity of someone who would not be surprised. The lion and lizard keep the courts now. Bahram was a Sassanid king famous for his hunting — the wild ass his particular quarry. Now the wild ass stamps over his head, indifferent to the irony, and Bahram lies fast asleep beneath the earth. The hunter hunted by time and overtaken by the very creature he pursued.
In spring this verse is almost insolent — who wants to think about fallen courts when the new courts of the season are in full florescence? And yet this is exactly when Khayyam inserts it. The glory of Jamshyd was as real as spring. The lion and lizard are as real as spring. Both are part of the same truth.