In July 1857, Edward FitzGerald wrote to George Borrow – an appropriate surname in the circumstances – asking to see his manuscript of the short poems that had been attributed to the medieval Persian astronomer Omar Khayyám. ‘You shall have Omar back directly, or whenever you want him’, he reassured Borrow, ‘and I should really like to make you a copy (taking my time) of the best Quatrains.’ It's tempting to read ‘taking my time’ as a private joke, especially coming from a writer who much preferred taking his time to taking chances or even opportunities. For his first biographer A. C. Benson, FitzGerald's life was one ‘singularly devoid of incident […] not rich in results, not fruitful in example’, as the years ‘passed slowly and easily, while [he] flitted hither and thither like a great shy moth’. It's a haunting image, suggesting a writer who found it hard to settle and left behind only the faintest of touches upon the world, one of which we can hear in that echo of the translation FitzGerald published two years later as Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám:

But FitzGerald's work has been richer in results and more fruitful in example than this, especially when later speakers have come to reflect on their place in time. Let me offer just three examples from the many available. First, the physicist Kenneth Winetrout describing the American way of life:

Second, the poet X. J. Kennedy recalling his teenage years: ‘Omar preached the doctrine of getting drunk and making love and so forgetting our lamentable human condition.