Omar Khayyam
Quick answer: Omar Khayyam perfected the quatrain. A craft guide to the ruba'i form, the turn in line three and carpe diem compression, with practice advice for poets.
Omar Khayyam, born in Nishapur in 1048, was famous in his own lifetime as a mathematician and astronomer: he worked on the classification of cubic equations and helped reform the Persian calendar. The quatrains, the rubaiyat, were almost a private sideline, and scholars still argue about how many of the hundreds attributed to him are genuinely his.
None of that uncertainty touches the craft lesson. The ruba'i, four lines rhyming aaba, is one of the most efficient thought-machines ever built in verse, and the quatrains under Khayyam's name use it with unmatched consistency: a scene, a pressure, a release, all inside four lines, all circling mortality and the wisdom of the present moment.
The poem
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward FitzGerald, 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam' (1859)
Who Omar Khayyam Was
He lived from 1048 to 1131, mostly in Nishapur, serving Seljuk patrons as a court scientist. The quatrains present a sceptical, humane intelligence: life is brief, certainty is unavailable, the wise response is attention to the day at hand, often figured as wine. Whether the historical Khayyam held these views or later poets sheltered their own doubts under his name, the corpus is coherent and powerful.
In 1859 the Victorian translator Edward FitzGerald published a free English version, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which became one of the most popular poems of the nineteenth century and carried Khayyam's name around the world.
The Signature Moves
The rubaiyat run on a small set of precise devices.
What You Can Learn
Write rubaiyat. There is no better small gym for a poet. Hold yourself to four lines rhyming aaba, and put the poem's swerve, its doubt or counter-thought, in the unrhymed third line, letting the fourth line close the case. Ten of these will teach you more about endings than a month of free drafting, and a tight quatrain sequence is a strong shape for a contest entry, where structure is scored alongside emotion.
Steal the material emblem habit. Before writing about time, death or luck, choose one object from your kitchen or street to carry the theme, and stay loyal to it for the whole quatrain. Abstractions borrow all their voltage from things.
Where to Start Reading
FitzGerald's 1859 Rubaiyat is the historic gateway and a great Victorian poem in its own right, though it is a free re-creation rather than a strict translation. Modern scholarly versions, such as those by Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs, sit closer to the Persian. Read both side by side to learn, in passing, how much a translator's own craft shapes what we call a poet's voice.
What poets can take from this
- Practise the aaba quatrain until the third-line swerve feels natural.
- Give every abstraction one physical object to live in.
- Treat each quatrain as a complete argument: premise, turn, verdict.
- Address a companion to keep philosophy conversational.
- Sequence quatrains so each one could stand alone, yet the order still builds.
Try it yourself
Write three linked quatrains rhyming aaba about time passing, each built around a different object currently within your reach, with the swerve of thought always in the third line.
Questions
What is a ruba'i?
A Persian quatrain of four lines usually rhyming aaba. The unrhymed third line creates tension that the final rhyme resolves, making the form ideal for compressed argument.
Did Omar Khayyam really write the Rubaiyat?
He certainly existed and was a renowned mathematician and astronomer, but many quatrains attributed to him circulated centuries after his death, and scholars disagree over which are authentic.
Is FitzGerald's translation faithful?
No, and he never claimed it was. FitzGerald freely combined, reshaped and invented, producing a Victorian masterpiece inspired by the Persian originals rather than a strict rendering.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.