The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Omar and other Sufi poets used popular similes and pictured the ordinary joys of life so that the worldly man could compare mundane pleasures with the superior joys experienced in the spiritual life. To the man who drinks wine in order to forget, temporarily, the unbearable sorrows and trials of his life, Omar off ers a delightful alternative: the nectar of divine ecstasy, which leads to divine enlightenment, thereby obliterating human woe permanently. Surely Omar did not go through the labor of writing so many exquisite verses merely to inspire people to escape sorrow by drugging their senses with alcohol!