Dear Henry Quince,
You're quite right---"The Art of Poetry" has nothing to do with Fitzgerald's Rubiyat: it was late at night and I had a senior moment. Borges did write a Rubiyat, and in my translation I did keep pretty strictly to Fitxgerald's prosodic structure. For your interest, I'll copy it out:
RUBIYAT
Now let my voice take up the Persian's verse
And call to mind that time is the diverse
Inweaving of the eager dreams we are,
Dreams that the Secret Dreamer shall disperse.
Let it proclaim once more that fire is ash
And flesh is dust, the river's casual splash
The fleeting image of your life and mine
That slowly, slowly vanish, in a flash.
Let it repeat that pride's elaborate tower
Is like the passing breeze, the blowing flower,
That to the radiance of the Eternal One
A century is briefer than an hour.
Say once more that the nightingale, as bright
And clear as gold in the echoing vault of night,
Sings only once; nor do the frugal stars
Fritter away their treasury of light.
And let the moon come back into the lines
Your patient hand sets down, just as it shines
At blue dawn in your garden. That same moon
Seeks you in vain among the columbines.
Under the moon that rises early or late
On tender evenings, learn to imitate
The simple wells on whose reflecting face
A few eternal images circulate.
Come back, O Persian moon, shine overhead,
And hazy golds the empty twilights shed.
Today is yesterday. You are all those
Whose faces are now dust. You are the dead.
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