1 | ->''Somebody once told me\ |
2 | His works, he'd like to show me\ |
3 | He thought they'd fill me with awe and dread\ |
4 | He was looking kind of dumb\ |
5 | Just two legs out in the sun\ |
6 | And his visage a broken stone head\ |
7 | Well, the years start coming and they don't stop coming\ |
8 | Statues are built and they hit the ground crumbling\ |
9 | "Didn't make sense not to build real high!"\ |
10 | Though naught is left but the desert sky\ |
11 | "So much I've done for you to see!\ |
12 | So what's wrong with looking upon me?"\ |
13 | We'll never know what the king shewed\ |
14 | We only know what the man hewed\ |
15 | Hey now, King of Kings now, built to last now, heyday\ |
16 | Hey now, all is gone now, fell to naught now, decay\ |
17 | Nothing beside remains\ |
18 | Only level sands stretch away'' |
19 | -->--'''[[https://web.archive.org/web/20190731084959/https://twitter.com/PateraQuetzaI/status/1156300892733243392 Patera Quetzal]]''', to the tune of [[Music/SmashMouth "All Star"]] |
20 | |
21 | ->'' We hold all Earth to plunder--\ |
22 | All Time and Space as well--\ |
23 | Too wonder-stale to wonder \ |
24 | At each new miracle; \ |
25 | Till in the mid-illusion \ |
26 | Of Godhead 'neath our hand, \ |
27 | Falls multiple confusion \ |
28 | On all we did or planned--\ |
29 | The mighty works we planned. '' |
30 | -->-- '''Creator/RudyardKipling''', excerpt from "Hymn of Breaking Strain" |
31 | |
32 | ->''And what if she had seen those glories fade,\ |
33 | Those titles vanish, and that strength decay;\ |
34 | Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid\ |
35 | When her long life hath reached its final day:\ |
36 | Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade\ |
37 | Of that which once was great is passed away.'' |
38 | -->'''Creator/WilliamWordsworth''', ''On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic'' |
39 | |
40 | ->''I met a traveller from an antique land\ |
41 | Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone\ |
42 | Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,\ |
43 | Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown\ |
44 | And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command\ |
45 | Tell that its sculptor well those passions read\ |
46 | Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,\ |
47 | The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.\ |
48 | And on the pedestal these words appear:\ |
49 | "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:\ |
50 | [[TropeNamers Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!]]"\ |
51 | Nothing beside remains. Round the decay\ |
52 | Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare\ |
53 | The lone and level sands stretch far away.'' |
54 | -->-- '''Creator/PercyByssheShelley''', "Ozymandias" |
55 | |
56 | ->''IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,\ |
57 | Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws\ |
58 | The only shadow that the Desart knows:--\ |
59 | "I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,\ |
60 | "The King of Kings; this mighty City shows\ |
61 | "The wonders of my hand."-- The City's gone,--\ |
62 | Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose\ |
63 | The site of this forgotten Babylon.\ |
64 | We wonder,--and some Hunter may express\ |
65 | Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness\ |
66 | Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,\ |
67 | He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess\ |
68 | What powerful but unrecorded race\ |
69 | Once dwelt in that annihilated place.'' |
70 | -->-- '''Horace Smith''', "Ozymandias" |
71 | |
72 | ->''Far-called, our navies melt away;\ |
73 | On dune and headland sinks the fire:\ |
74 | Lo, all our pomp of yesterday\ |
75 | Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!\ |
76 | Judge of the Nations, spare us yet.\ |
77 | Lest we forget--lest we forget!'' |
78 | -->-- '''Creator/RudyardKipling''', "Recessional" |
79 | |
80 | ->''"More than a thousand years of conflicts, hates and loves - all reduced to dust in these tombs. Nothing remains of the ancient princes of Vieda, but the dead shadows of their former glory."'' |
81 | -->--'''Dr. Thomas Kruvajan''', ''Film/BlackSunday'' |
82 | |
83 | ->"''This place was the beginning of the end for my family. A dragon is not a slave. They were terrifying. Extraordinary. They filled people with wonder and awe, and we locked them in here. They wasted away. They grew small. And we grew small as well. We weren't extraordinary without them. We were just like everyone else.''" |
84 | -->-- '''Daenerys''' about the Targaryen Dynasty's loss of their dragons and subsequent decline, ''Series/GameOfThrones'', "[[Recap/GameOfThronesS7E7TheDragonAndTheWolf The Dragon and the Wolf]]" |
85 | |
86 | ->''All of Man's works, all his cities, all his empires, all his monuments will one day crumble to dust. Even the houses of my own dear readers must - though it be for just one day, one hour - be ruined and become houses where the stones are mortared with moonlight, windowed with starlight and furnished with the dusty wind. It is said that in that day, in that hour, our houses become the possessions of the [[TheArchmage Raven King]].'' |
87 | -->--'''Jonathan Strange,''' ''Literature/JonathanStrangeAndMrNorrell'' |
88 | |
89 | ->''Los Voraces was a golden city,\ |
90 | As the history writers all have penned.\ |
91 | But her days were numbered in that heavenly book,\ |
92 | And she pushed her own button in the end.'' |
93 | -->-- ''Radio/TheStanFrebergShow'', "Incident at Los Voraces" |
94 | |
95 | ->''Higher beings, these words are for you alone.\ |
96 | Beyond this point you enter the land of King and Creator.\ |
97 | Step across this threshold and obey our laws.\ |
98 | Bear witness to the last and only civilisation, the eternal Kingdom.\ |
99 | Hallownest'' |
100 | -->--''VideoGame/HollowKnight,'' a lore tablet at the entrance to the kingdom of Hallownest, which is a plague-ridden ruin. |
101 | |
102 | ->''Oh, where do we begin?\ |
103 | The rubble or our sins?\ |
104 | Oh, oh, where do we begin?\ |
105 | The rubble or our sins?'' |
106 | |
107 | ->''And the walls kept tumbling down\ |
108 | In the city that we loved\ |
109 | Gray clouds roll over the hills\ |
110 | Bringing darkness from above'' |
111 | |
112 | ->''But if you close your eyes\ |
113 | Does it almost feel like nothing changed it all?\ |
114 | And if you close your eyes\ |
115 | Does it almost feel like you've been here before?\ |
116 | How am I gonna be an optimist about this?\ |
117 | How am I gonna be an optimist about this?\ |
118 | If you close your eyes\ |
119 | Does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?'' |
120 | -->--'''Music/{{Bastille}}''', "Pompeii" |
121 | |
122 | ->''The Earth is littered with the ruins of empires that believed they were eternal.'' |
123 | -->--'''Camille Paglia''' |
124 |
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