The Roses

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Title:     The Roses
Author: Edward Powys Mathers [More Titles by Mathers]

Roses are a wandering scent from heaven.
Rose-seller, why do you sell your roses?
For silver? But with the silver from your roses
What can you buy so precious as your roses?

From the Persian of Abu-Yshac (middle of the tenth century).

[Note: THE ROSES, this rubai made Abu Yshac famous. He died at least twenty years before the birth of Omar Khayyam. Readers will have been struck by the similarity of idea in "The Roses" and in two lines in Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat:

I often wonder what the vintners buy
One-half so precious as the goods they sell.]

[The end]
Edward Powys Mathers's poem: Roses

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