Where the fair Absalom, stalwart and beautiful?
Where the sweet Jonathan, lovely and dutiful?
Whither went Caesar, that monarch illustrious?
Or the proud Dives, at table industrious?
Tell me of Tullius, lofty in eloquence;
Or Aristoteles, first in grandiloquence.
So many heroes, such spacious activity,
Dancers and mountebanks, kingdoms and levity;
Rulers of earth who were tyrannous o’er us all—
Swift as a glance they are gone from before us all!