Quatrain 43
Quatrain 43 of 75
“The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The subtle Alchemist that in a Trice
Life's leaden Metal into Gold transmute.”
Reflection · Summer
The subtle Alchemist that in a Trice transmutes Life's leaden Metal into Gold. Life's leaden metal is the weight of ordinary existence: the anxiety, the sorrow, the weight of time, the unanswered questions. The gold is what the cup produces — not an escape from these things but a transmutation of them. In a Trice — the transformation happens immediately, without the long labor of the alchemist's furnace.
This is what offended the seventy-two sects about Khayyam: he found the alchemy available without their intermediation. The grape confutes them not by defeating their arguments but by rendering them temporarily beside the point. In summer this verse is triumph: the alchemist is working, the gold is in the cup.