Awake! For Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me, singing in the Wilderness -
And wilderness is Paradise enow.

'Tis all a chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for pieces plays,
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.

-Rubaiyat, Omar Khayyam