"Ah, my Belovéd, fill the Cup that clears:" FitzGerald's The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:20

"Ah, my Belovéd, fill the Cup that clears:" FitzGerald's The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 1:20

Stanza no. 20 in in the first edition of Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám celebrates wine as a means of escaping lingering shame and the dread of an unknown future. It is about, as the hippies used to say in the 1960s, “being here now,” with a little help from a mind-altering substance. You can see why the Rubáiyát was still wildly popular in the Sixties in the youth culture. The first Grateful Dead album cover was a woodcut illu…