The Rubaiyat : Quatrain XX


Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of past Regrets and future Fears--
To-morrow?--Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.

This is the twentieth quatrain of "The Rubaiyat". The poet says O! my beloved, fill this cup of mine with that intoxicating wine. It cheers my heart and clears and helps me forget the regrets of the past and makes me unaware of the fear of the future (as to what lies ahead). This wine animates me and makes me forget the past and the future. Why the future? Because tomorrow my beloved, I may be dead. I may be what I was seven thousand years ago (a lump of lifeless rock, the poet assumes that life started seven thousand years). The motif of the quatrain being enjoying the present for tomorrow no one knows, we may be dead and consequently a relic of past.

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