My Rubaiyat, LXXIII–LXXV

Seek beauty and you will find her, Brave the surge of the crowded street, Or rest at the mountain’s green slope And commune with trees and the birds, With the soil and the mossgrown rocks, And pray at the shrine of the gods.

There are roses and there is youth, There are joys and sorrows and love, Dawn and twilight, the noonday sun, The rolling plains, sky and the sea, None have lost their old-time mystery, Events pass away, beauty survives.

Let us wrest beauty from all there is, Each and all in their own poor way, And blithely onward life will flow, Rare like a long-drawn summer’s eve, And we’ll hail and bless each moment Before it fades into the dark.