The Rubaiyat (1120)
Source: "American Names" (1931)
The King's Tragedy, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Wonderful but true! Shall future progeny of men believe, when crops grow again and this desert shall once more be green, that cities and peoples are buried below and that an ancestral countryside vanished in a common doom? Nor does the summit yet cease its deadly thrust.”
Mira fides! credetne virum ventura propago,
cum segetes iterum, cum iam haec deserta virebunt,
infra urbes populosque premi proavitaque tanto
rura abiisse mari? necdum letale minari
cessat apex.
iv, line 81
Silvae, Book IV
1860s, Letter to Horace Greeley (1862)
To His Coy Mistress (1650-1652)
From a letter to John Taylor (June 1798), after the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts
1790s
Context: A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.
