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.
This version of the opening quatrain is gradually evolved through the four editions. The quatrain, which, in the first edition runs:
Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung 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.
is inspired by C. 134.
The Sun casts the noose of morning upon the roofs,
Kai Khosru of the day, he throws a stone into the bowl:
Drink wine! for the Herald of the Dawn, rising up,
Hurls into the days the cry of «Drink ye!»
Ref.:[15]L. 235, B. 232, C. 134, P. 320, T. 138.—W. 233, V. 242.
It is not surprising that Mr. Aldis Wright, in his editorial note at the end of Messrs. Macmillan's definitive edition (London, 1890), states that «the first stanza is entirely his own,» for, in this precise form the ruba'i is only to be found in the Calcutta MS. and in a recently discovered MS. copied largely from it and belonging to the Nawab of Tonk. The matter rests upon the word «stone» in the second line. The word means «to fling a stone into a cup or pot,» which is the signal for «striking camp» among tribes of nomad Arabs. All the other texts I have seen read wine for stone which has made the translators (Whinfield and Payne) properly render the passage «pours wine into the cup.»