Quatrain 38

Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestin'd Evil round
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin!

FitzGerald, Stanza LXXX, 4th ed.

Heron-Allen, 119: "This quatrain is translated from O. 148."

بر رهگذرم هزار  جا دام نهی
گویی که بگیرمت اگر گام نهی
یک ذره ز حکم تو جهان خالی نیست
حکم تو  کنی و عاصیم نام نهی

bar rahgozaram hazaar jaa daam nehi
gui ke begiramat agar gaam nehi
yek zarre ze hokm to jahaan khaali nist
hokm-e to koni o aasiyam naam nehi

A thousand snares along our path You sprawl,
Then warn us, "I will punish if you fall";
The world is never free from Your command

You give the word, then sinners us You call!

Saidi, quatrain 41

With many a snare Thou dost beset my way,
And threatenest, if I fall therein, to slay;
Thy laws pervade the universe, yet Thou
Imputest sin, when I do but obey!

Whinfield, quatrain 432

Other translations or renditions are to be found under Bodleian/Ouseley 148.

FitzGerald is "faithful" to the Bodleian quatrain.  His "pitfall and gin" conveys well the "thousand snares/traps positioned along my road" -- clever devices, as "gin" indicates, a word that has behind it a meaning of both the clever and wicked (originally from Latin ingenium > Old French engin, English "engine".  At some juncture the pronunciation had shifted to the final syllable, and en- was discarded by a "letting- go" process, called aphesis, where an unstressed first syllable can be dropped, so this "engine" became "gin."

In the fourth hemistich, Arberry, Romance ... 227, emends: hukmam [hukm, sic] to koni - that is, "you make the rule for me." Arberry: "Heron-Allen on two occasions printed hukm for hukm-am in the fourth line; Cowell had made the same error before him in the transcription of O [148], though it broke the metre."  I can't vouch for Cowell but Heron-Allen's reading conforms to the reading of the MS as viewers will have noted, and it is  within metrical bounds.  So this appears to be just an emendation on Arberry's part and not a MS variant.

There is in fact no metrical difficulty.  There are at least three places within our quatrains, this quatrain and Quatrain 10, the third line of which begins similarly, kaar-e man o to, where, as is the case with hokm-e to koni, the connector or ezafe is "long" as allowed by the conventions of metrics. The third is Quatrain 7, which begins vaqt-e sahar ast, also with lengthened ezafe.  Dashti, Hedaayat and Forughi-Ghani do not include this quatrain, but look at Saidi, quatrain 41,  and see his reading: hokm-ash to koni - "you make the rule for it" and Whinfield, quatrain 343, hokmi to koni "you make a rule". Both likely appear concerned about metrical difficulties and make emendations.

A final word: it is not generally recommended that emendations be made when there are no other manuscripts available for comparison.  It appears from Saidi's notes and from Whinfield's that the Bodleain was their only source.

A most final word: this may have seemed tedious, this metrical excursus.  However, learners of Persian who struggle with the ins and outs of the metrics of the Persian quatrain may have found it useful.