Ah, my Belovéd, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of Past Regrets and Future Fears:
To-morrow!—Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.
FitzGerald, Stanza XXI, 4th ed.
This stanza has its source, according to Heron-Allen, p. 35, in C 348:
ای دوست بیا تا غم فردا نخوریم
وین یکدمه نقد را غنیمت شمریم
فردا که ازین روی زمین درگذریم
با هفتهزار سالگان سر بسریم
ey dust biyaa taa gham-e farda nakhorim
vin yekdame naqd raa ghanimat shomarim
fardaa ke azin ruy-e zamin dargozarim
baa hafthazaar saalegaan sar besarim
O friend, come, let us not consume tomorrow's grief,
and let us count as gain this one moment's cash:
tomorrow when we pass away from the face of the earth
we shall be level with those of seven thousand years ago.
Arberry, Romance ... 205
ای دوست بیا تا غم فردا نخوریم
وین یک دم عمررا غنیمت شمریم
فردا که ازین دیر کهن در گذریم
با هفتهزار سالگان سر بسریم
Dashti, quatrain 64 & Hedaayat, 130 (with doubts about authenticity); cf. Forughi-Ghani, quatrain 121, which we will discuss below
ey dust biyaa taa gham-e farda nakhorim
vin yek dam-e ‘omr raa ghanimat shomarim
fardaa ke azin deyr-e kohan dar gozarim
baa hafthazaar saalegaan sar besarim
Come, my love, let sorrow go,
the sadness of tomorrow,
and the time-plundered moments,
spend them while life flows.
There will be tomorrow
when we leave old haunts behind
and travel side-by-side
seven thousand years in time.
The Dashti text above differs little from the "source" quatrain Heron-Allen selects from the Calcutta MS. Arberry might have translated it this way:
O friend, come, let us not consume tomorrow's grief,
and let us count as gain this one moment of life:
tomorrow when we pass away from this old haunt
we shall be level with those of seven thousand years ago.
Notes: The second line, vin yekdame naqd raa ghanimat shomarim, وین یکرمه نقد را غنیمت شمریم, is appealing by the clause, naqd(raa) ghanimat shomarim -- let us steal the cash (of this single moment). This line, in both the Calcutta MS and in Dashti, Hedaayat, and Forughi-Ghani's texts, expresses the familiar carpe diem, "seize the day, seize the moment", and a rendition is all the more effective with the use of a word like "plunder"; that said, this is simply a familiar idiom for enjoying what is at hand, the cash of the moment, as it were. FitzGerald of course deviates and tries to capture the spirit by clearing the slate of yesterday and tomorrow. But it is not the "cup that clears"; not to put too fine a point on it, the exhortation does not offer a specific remedy. Here may be a good example of FitzGerald's reading too much into his source-text, yet this is his poem, his design.
There is a note in Kasra's text, quatrain 121 (as said before, she has published the 1942 text of Forughi-Ghani). It is about saalegaan. Forughi's text reads saalekaan. 'It appears that all the major translators of Khayyām whose works I have seen so far, have misread sálikán. They have read it sáligán. The former means "mystics"; the latter is derived from sál which means "year." And this has produced the concept of "seven thousand years" instead of "seven thousand mystics" in so many translations. The error, of course, could have originated from some of the manuscripts. Hence, a major error in various translations of this beautiful Rubá‘i."
From my observations, textual evidence (Kasra would not disagree) favors saalegaan and this likely means manuscript evidence as well. Is this simply a Forughi-Ghani emendation? Without discussion other than Kasra's there is no way of knowing. saalek could be a mystic of course, but why not its meaning of a traveler? "Travelers" then would place it closer in meaning to saalegaan, "seven thousand years of lives" -- saale, one year of life.
Why 7000? FitzGerald's note in all the editions offers this explanation: 'a thousand years to each planet.' Ahmad Saidi in note 89, p. 251 (for quatrain 103): ' The reference is to the Caravan of the Dead, which began forming after the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, said to have occurred some 6,000 years ago. According to the Bible, it will be another thousand years before the Kingdom of God abolishes death forever.'
I am still baffled by 7000. I consulted Annemarie Schimmel's The Mystery of Numbers. There was nothing between 1001 and 10,000. Here's what she had to say on numbers in her closing remarks: "Humans have tried to solve the mystery of numbers for millenia, using and misusing them, and yet, the fascination remains. As the architect Le Corbusier tells us: 'Behind the wall, the gods play. They play with numbers, of which the Universe is made up.'"