Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes
Whatever hath been written shall remain,
Nor be erased nor written o'er again;
The unwritten only still belongs to thee:
Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. "Morituri Salutamus." The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems, James R. Osgood and Company, 1875, p. 55.
Although the Bedouin culture was and is primarily an oral culture, in recent generations schools were introduced into society along with book learning. This proverb is of relatively late origin and reflects the Bedouin tradition of reducing all wisdom to oral proverbs—even wisdom about the relative weakness or oral communications. See {616459} for the more traditional view of the transfer of knowledge.
Unlike most men of his time, he was secretive and wrote very little.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the Fireside Poets from New England.
