Category: public domain

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám (circa 1872)

This is just one of many gorgeous covers that have adorned this gorgeous book of poetry over the years. 

Western society’s narrative about that 

(Persian: رباعیات عمر خیام‎, translit. Robāʿiāt-e ʿOmar Khayyām‎) is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and numbering about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer. A ruba'i (Persian: رباعی‎, translit. rubāʿī‎, derived from Arabic root rubāʿī (رباعي), “consisting of four, quadripartite, fourfold”) is a two-line stanza with two parts (or hemistichs) per line, hence the word rubayot, meaning “quatrains”.^[1]

Wikipedia: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám