That failure of material ambitions stands immortalised for us in Shelley’s “Ozymandias”:
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive—stamped on these lifeless things—
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:—