“Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night / Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight”Omar Khayyam · Rubaiate · 1120 · catrenul 1
Every morning you sleep through is a piece of life that never returns.
The image turns sunrise into a game: night is a drinking bowl, and morning hurls a stone into it that startles the stars away. It is a call to wake, but also to notice time draining away. Every night that ends is a portion of life spent; sleeping too long means losing what will not return. Anyone who wakes late in life, at retirement or after illness, feels exactly this: morning came long ago.
Why it matters Useful whenever we procrastinate: a day started late is still a day lost, and life does not wait.