Chayyam guyand kasan behescht ba hur chosch ast small

A ''rubāʿī'' (, from

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

; plural: ) or ''chahārgāna(e)'' () is a poem or a verse of a poem in

Persian poetry Persian literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Persian language and is one of the world's oldest literatures. It spans over two-and-a-half millennia. Its sources have been within Greater Iran including present-day ...

(or its derivative in English and other languages) in the form of a

quatrain A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four Line (poetry), lines. Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Persia, Ancient India ...

, consisting of four lines (four

hemistich A hemistich (; via Latin from Greek , from "half" and "verse") is a half-line of verse, followed and preceded by a caesura, that makes up a single overall prosodic or verse unit. In Latin and Greek poetry, the hemistich is generally confined ...

s). In classical

, the ''ruba'i'' is written as a four-line (or two-

couplet In poetry, a couplet ( ) or distich ( ) is a pair of successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (closed) couplet, each of the two lines is end-stopped, implying that there ...

/ two-

distich In poetry, a couplet ( ) or distich ( ) is a pair of successive Line (poetry), lines that rhyme and have the same Metre (poetry), metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (closed) couplet, each of the two lines is en ...

) poem, with a rhyme-scheme AABA or AAAA. This is an example of a ''ruba'i'' from

Rumi Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (), or simply Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century poet, Hanafi '' faqih'' (jurist), Maturidi theologian (''mutakallim''), and Sufi mystic born during the Khwarazmian Empire ...

's '' Divan-e Shams'': : : : : :May the splendors of Salahuddin be roused, :And poured into the eyes and souls of the lovers. :May every soul that has become refined and has surpassed refinement :Be mingled with the dust of Salahuddin!

Metre

The usual metre of a Persian ''ruba'i'', which is used for all four lines of the above quatrain by Rumi, is, as follows: : – – u u – u – u – – u u – In the above scheme, quantitatively, "–" represents a long syllable, and "u" a short one. As variations of this scheme, any sequence of – u, except the final syllable of each line, can be replaced by a single "overlong" syllable, such as ''gēkh'', ''tīf'', ''luṭf'' in the poem above, containing either a long vowel followed by a consonant other than "n", or a short vowel followed by two consonants. An overlong syllable, as mentioned, can freely be substituted for the final syllable of the line, as with ''bād'' above. Another variation, as a poetic licence rule, is that occasionally a sequence of two short syllables (u u) can be replaced by a single long one (–). A third variation is to use the same metre as above, but with the sixth and seventh syllables reversed: : – – u u – – u u – – u u –

In English

The verse form AABA as used in English verse is known as the Rubaiyat Quatrain due to its use by Edward FitzGerald in his famous 1859 translation, ''

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam ''Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám'' is the title that Edward FitzGerald (poet), Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian language, Persian to English of a selection of quatrains (') attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dub ...

''.

Algernon Charles Swinburne Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist and critic. He wrote many plays – all tragedies – and collections of poetry such as '' Poems and Ballads'', and contributed to the Eleve ...

, one of the first admirers of FitzGerald's translation of Khayyam's medieval Persian verses, was the first to imitate the stanza form, which subsequently became popular and was used widely, as in the case of

Robert Frost Robert Lee Frost (March26, 1874January29, 1963) was an American poet. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American Colloquialism, colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New E ...

's 1922 poem "

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is a poem by Robert Frost, written in 1922, and published in 1923 in his ''New Hampshire'' volume. Imagery, personification, and repetition are prominent in the work. In a letter to Louis Untermeyer ...

". FitzGerald's translation became so popular by the turn of the century that hundreds of American humorists wrote parodies using the form and, to varying degrees, the content of his stanzas, including ''The Rubaiyat of Ohow Dryyam'', ''The Rubáiyát of a Persian Kitten'', ''The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne'' and ''The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr.'' In extended sequences of ''ruba'i'' stanzas, the convention is sometimes extended so that the unrhymed line of the current stanza becomes the rhyme for the following stanza. The structure can be made cyclical by linking the unrhymed line of the final stanza back to the first stanza: ZZAZ. These more stringent systems were not, however, used by FitzGerald in his ''Rubaiyat''.

Notes

References

External links

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Tajik girls reciting ruba'i quatrains
{{Authority control Stanzaic form Persian literature Persian poetic forms Medieval poetry Iranian inventions Literary genres