POEM OF THE DAY

A SPLENDID new volume offers the poetry-minded a double dose of delight. In The Fire Of Joy, the late Clive James chooses “roughly 80 poems to get by heart and say aloud.” Since his selection encompasses some of the most admired poems in English, the reader has the primary subject to enjoy and also James’s sharp and witty comments thereon. He doesn’t quite advocate memorising Paradise Lost but some of his choices would demand a valiant effort. Take The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, represented in the book (Picador, £20) by six familiar stanzas.

from THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Translated by Edward Fitzgerald, 1859

Wake! For the Sun, who scatter’d into flight

The Stars before him from the Field of Night,

Drives Night along with them from Heav’n and strikes

The Sultan’s Turret with a Shaft of Light

VII

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring

Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:

The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter – and the Bird is on the Wing.

XII

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A jug if Wine, a loaf of Bread and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness – Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

XVII

Think, in this batter’d Caravanserai Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,

How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp Abode his destined Hour, and went his way.

XIX

I sometimes think that never blows so red

The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;

That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.

LXXI

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.