6 Tir 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 · Summer 1405
In summer the lion and lizard in Jamshyd's courts are perfectly active. The summer heat drives the lizard into the shade of fallen stones, and the lion sleeps in the afternoon warmth of what was once a throne room. Nature occupying human architecture is summer work — the vines creeping over the walls, the grass pushing through the floor, the birds nesting in the undefended eaves.
Gloried and drank deep — this was summer's work, for Jamshyd as for anyone. The drinking deep is what summer is for. The glorying is natural and appropriate. What Khayyam asks is only that you notice, at the height of your glorying, that the courts will one day be kept by different tenants. The humor in his ruin verses is genuine: he finds the cosmic irony funny as well as humbling.