“Masters, I have to tell a tale of woe,
A tale of folly and of wasted life”
Introductory verse.
The Earthly Paradise (1868-70)
Context: Masters, I have to tell a tale of woe,
A tale of folly and of wasted life,
Hope against hope, the bitter dregs of strife,
Ending, where all things end, in death at last.
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William Morris119
author, designer, and craftsman 1834–1896Related quotes
“I shudder as I tell the tale.”
Horresco referens.
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book II, Line 204 (tr. Fairclough)
“With living colours give my verse to glow:
The sad memorial of a tale of woe!”
William Falconer (1732–1769) British writer
Introduction, lines 35-36.
The Shipwreck (1762)
“I quail,
E'en now, at telling of the tale.”
John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar
Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book II, p. 48
“How easy it is to tell tales!”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist
Jacques le Fataliste (1796)
Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet
The Song of Seventy.
A Thousand Lines (1846)
“I first began to tell tales to delight the world and make it wiser…”
Karen Blixen book Anecdotes of Destiny
Anecdotes of Destiny (1953)