“
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
”
”
Omar Khayyám (The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam)
“
Twain had already traveled himself to the Middle East in 1867, the experience of which he details in The Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrim’s Progress (1869), and from the 1870s was much captivated by a different Persian poet, cOmar Khayyam, whose Rubáiyát Twain described as “the only poem I have ever carried about with me.
”
”
Franklin D. Lewis (Rumi - Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings, and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi)