Break not your dimming glass at your feet
And drive through the gate of life with care.
Will not yours, which they call defeat,
And out of your blood bleed your despair.
Always there’s day and there’s night
To follow your day and your morrow ;
There’s the eternal gleam missing sight
In the gloom, in moments of sorrow.
Fear not the fume of life in the glass
The living well of your smiles and tears;
Take your cooling draft of time and pass
On the hillside of your days and years.
Dire tyrants have come and had their sway,
As old Genghis and his empire,
They had a drink and were swept away
By the winds of their fate to expire.
And old Khayyam, whose wisdom o’erspread
The benighted world from pole to pole,
To us, his puny children, he said,
Drink, there’s no damnation of the soul,
Drink your glass as it comes to the lees
And have nothing to claim your regret,
Having had enough wishing to ease
Catch collapse of your wish and forget.