Word: fitzgeraldã
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Dates: during 1965-1965
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...offer a slight correction to your admirable account of my affair with that cow (in the CRIMSON of Saturday, May 1). The consolatory verses that you quoted were of course only a remodeling of the well-known lines from Edward Fitzgerald??€™s Rubalyat of Omar Khayam...
...least was true. Your version of my third line, however, runs "Ah, would that Harvard Yard were paradise now," and this not only adds two words and an extra metrical foot to the line but also (and here I speak) with all the pedantry at my command) changes Fitzgerald??€™s rather archaic "were." meaning "would be" in the apodosis of a conditional sentence, into part of an portative construction, expressing a wish. To my car this conveys a little more fervor about the Yard than more gallantry to the cow would require. Robert Fitzgerald Lecturer on English