Omar Khayyam on Wine

Sobriety doth dry up all delight,
And drunkenness doth drown my sense outright;
There is a middle state, it is my life -
Not altogether drunk, nor sober quite.

Now with its joyful prime my age is rife,
I quaff enchanting wine, and list to fife;
Chide not at wine for all its bitter taste,
Its bitterness sorts well with human life!

So many cups of wine will I consume,
Its bouquet shall exhale from out my tomb,
And every one that passes by shall halt,
And reel and stagger with that mighty fume.

When I am dead, with wine my body lave,
For obit chant a bacchanalian stave,
And, if you need me at the day of doom,
Beneath the tavern threshold seek my grave.

From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam translated by Edward Henry Whinfield (1883). The image is the portrair of Khayyam at his Mausoleum in Nishapur (Iran), courtesy of Wikipedia.