Hebraism and Hellenism

Abstract

One would like to know exactly what Hardy thought as his wife read, at his request, not long before he died, this verse from Edward FitzGerald’s version of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám:

Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,

And ev’n with Paradise devise the Snake:

For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man

Is blacken’d — Man’s forgiveness give — and take!