Dear smilinggranite-ga,
The exact quote is,
"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."
The lines are from an English translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar
Khayyam, stanza LI. The Rubaiyat is a collection of nearly 600 four
line poems by the Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyám.
The poems were freely translated by Edward Fitzgerald in 1859. Omar
Khayyam's full name was Ghiyath al-Din Abu'l-Fath Umar ibn Ibrahim
Al-Nisaburi al-Khayyami.
Sources agree that the translation was so free that it could be
virtually regarded as an original work.
These pages will give you some additional background information,
The Rubaiyat
http://www.fact-index.com/r/ru/rubaiyat_of_omar_khayyam.html
Omar Khayyam
http://www.fact-index.com/o/om/omar_khayyam.html
http://www.stetson.edu/~efriedma/periodictable/html/O.html
http://www.abacci.com/books/book.asp?bookID=2444
You can download a copy of Fitzgerald?s translation at
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext95/rubai10.txt
An alternative translation of the stanza has been provided by Omar
Ali-Shah and Robert Graves.
"What we shall be is written, and we are so.
Heedless of God or Evil, pen, write on!
By the first day all futures were decided;"
http://www.humanistictexts.org/omar_khayyam.htm
I hope this answers your question. If it does not, or the answer is
unclear, then please ask for clarification of this research before
rating the answer. I shall respond to the clarification request as
soon as I receive it.
Thank you
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"The Moving Finger writes and having writ"
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