And here from afar we see an army
Of the dead strewn o’er the plain,
No prose nor verse can comprehend
Their number, from India, from China,
From Morocco and from Spain
From all the corers of he earth they came,
Men said to be happy,
Popes, kings and emperors;
Now they lie naked, wretched, beggars.
Where are their riches now? Where their honors
Their gems, sceptres, crowns,
Their mitres and their purple?
Wretched is he who hopes in worldly things
(But who does not do so?), and if, in the end,
They are deceived, then this is just.
O ye blind, wherefore all your toil?
Petrarch, The Triumph of Death, I. Quotes in Umberto Eco, On Ugliness, 2007, p 64.
