The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XV

Quatrain XV

First Edition

And those who husbanded the Golden Grain,
And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.



Second Edition

For those who husbanded the Golden grain,
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.




Fifth Edition

And those who husbanded the Golden grain,
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.



There seems to be only a single word changed in the 2nd edition and that was changed back to the original word by the fifth edition. FitzGerald changed the first word "And" to "For" in the 2nd edition and then changed it back to "And" in the fifth edition. Just what the change added, I haven't the slightest idea, but whatever the reason, FitzGerald seems to have thought it over and decided to stay with the original word.

And again, the number of capitalized nouns drops, this time from 8 in the first quatrain to 4 in quatrains 2 and 5.

"Aureate" means "golden colored" or "gilded." In this case, I think "golden colored" as in "golden colored Earth" seems to be more fitting than "gilded Earth."

"Husband" means "to spend or use economically, to budget, to conserve."

"Husbandry" relates to farming or careful use of resources.





The quatrain suggests that regardless of whether one uses one's resources carefully and wisely

"And those who husbanded the Golden Grain"


or whether one is a spendthrift

"And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain,"



the end result is the same.

"Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd
As, buried once, Men want dug up again."


There is no difference after one dies, for neither is buried in golden earth and no one would want to dug them up again. The dissolution is the grave in the same for the poor and the rich. Perhaps the grave is the only place where all are equal. I wonder whether this comes more from FitzGerald than from Khayyam, especially when one considers the oft-quoted meditation in Ecclesiastes, "All is vanity" when the Preacher asks:


"What profit hath a man of all his labour
which he taketh under the sun.
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh:
but the earth abideth for ever."



What we did when alive makes no difference, once we are in the grave, or does it?