Lunch Bag dad- A few of Dad's 8 years of drawings on his daughter's lunchbag

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

20. My father used to wake my twin brother and me by loudly reciting the opening quatrains

Of Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

Awake! For morning in the bowl of night
Has loosed the stone that puts the stars to flight.
And Lo! The hunter of the east has caught
The sultan's turret in a noose of light.

Dreaming when dawn's left hand was in the sky
I heard a voice within the tavern cry,
"Awake! My little ones; and fill the cup
Before life's liquor in its cup be dry."

And, as the cock crew, those who stood before
The tavern cried, "Open then the door!
You know how little time we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more."