What is van dam?

Famous quotes containing the words dam and/or van:

“The devil take one party and his dam the other!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

“I passed a tomb among green shades
Where seven anemones with down-dropped heads
Wept tears of dew upon the stone beneath.”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.

AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)