well-lost

These half-smiles are, I take it, youth's comment on the riddle of a continued existence, on the loss of well-lost illusions, on the uncertainty of all future values.

When Winter Comes to Main Street Grant Martin Overton 1908

Of course poor _William_ very naturally resented this extraordinarily inconsiderate return from the dead of a long and well-lost brother, several thousand of whose pounds he had misappropriated.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 Various 1898

It is there manifest that she has taken a full and just measure of her situation: she frankly avows the conviction that she “loves in vain,” and that she “strives against hope”; that she “lends and gives where she is sure to lose”; nevertheless she resolves to “venture the well-lost life of hers on his Grace's cure,” and leave the result in other hands.

Shakespeare His Life Art And Characters Hudson, H N 1872

It is there manifest that she has taken a full and just measure of her situation: she frankly avows the conviction that she "loves in vain," and that she "strives against hope"; that she "lends and gives where she is sure to lose"; nevertheless she resolves to "venture the well-lost life of hers on his Grace's cure," and leave the result in other hands.

Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. With An Historical Sketch Of The Origin And Growth Of The Drama In England Henry Norman Hudson 1850

I shall forgive the white South much in its final judgment day: I shall forgive its slavery, for slavery is a world-old habit; I shall forgive its fighting for a well-lost cause, and for remembering that struggle with tender tears; I shall forgive its so-called “pride of race,” the passion of its hot blood, and even its dear, old, laughable strutting and posing; but one thing I shall never forgive, neither in this world nor the world to come: its wanton and continued and persistent insulting of the black womanhood which it sought and seeks to prostitute to its lust.

DARKWATER W.E.B. DU BOIS 2004

I shall forgive the white South much in its final judgment day: I shall forgive its slavery, for slavery is a world-old habit; I shall forgive its fighting for a well-lost cause, and for remembering that struggle with tender tears; I shall forgive its so-called "pride of race," the passion of its hot blood, and even its dear, old, laughable strutting and posing; but one thing I shall never forgive, neither in this world nor the world to come: its wanton and continued and persistent insulting of the black womanhood which it sought and seeks to prostitute to its lust.

Darkwater Voices from Within the Veil 1915