The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of itA 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.
