Take it or leave it. Poetry and music keeps us on a right track through our journey towards that elusive goal of finding contentment and happiness and our eternal quest for the meaning of life. Music is the best means we have of digesting time. Whereas, poetry is a way of taking life by the throat. A verbal art like poetry is reflective - it stops to think.
Music is immediate - it goes on to become.
Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind. And poetry is what Omar Khayyam saw when he fell in love with his Creator and His Creation. Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it. FitzGerald found great consolation in Khayyam's skeptical, sensuous poems, which extol the virtues of loving deeply in the present moment. Preserving the Persian poet's four-line verse form, FitzGerald edited, embellished, and arranged the quatrains in dramatic sequence, making his contribution far more than that of mere translator.