Quatrain 5
Quatrain 5 of 75
“Iram indeed is gone with all its Rose,
And Jamshyd's Sev'n-ring'd Cup where no one knows;
But still the Vine her ancient Ruby yields,
And still a Garden by the Water blows.”
Reflection · Spring
Iram was the legendary garden city of ancient Arabia — a paradise of roses so perfect that God erased it from the earth. Jamshyd was the great Persian king whose seven-ringed cup could show him everything happening in the world. Both gone. No one knows where. And yet — the vine still gives her ancient ruby. A garden still blooms by the water. This is Khayyam's clearest statement of his philosophy of continuity: the beautiful renews itself through different vessels. Iram's particular roses are gone, but roses are not gone.
On the first of Ordibehesht, when the roses are opening and the air is so heavy with their scent that you feel you could drink it, this verse is simply true. The rose that blooms today in your garden descends from roses that bloomed when no one reading this had yet been born. The ancient ruby. The ancient garden. The ancient morning. You, briefly, the vessel through which all of it passes.