The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam, in the famous translation by Edward FitzGerald, remains one of the world's most popular poems. Well received at the time, it also reveals the popularity of Victorian England's fascination with the Orient.

Here, the poem forms the main work in the first part of this recording, along with shorter poems by other leading Persian and Indian figures, including Rumi, Sa'di and Rabindranath Tagore. The second half is devoted to works written by Western poets on the theme of the East with "The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan," an excerpt from Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh, one of the bestsellers of the early nineteenth century.