Rubaiyat 51

The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it

A Persian mathematician, astronomer and a poet, Khayyam was the putative author of the collection of shorty, philosophical poems known as the Rubaiyat - meaning 'quatrains'. The Translator Edward Fitzgerald used two different manuscripts, assembled and adapted the separate poems into a single work, published in 1859.