10th June 2007, pencil on bristol board, 29.5x21cm, no references.

Time, The Devourer of All Things.

To that high Capital, where kingly Death
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,
He came.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822),
Adonais (1821), 7

The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate,
Death lays his icy hand on kings...
James Shirley (1596-1666),
The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses (1659), Act i, Sc. 3

Oh, let me range the gloomy aisles alone:
Sad luxury! to vulgar minds unknown;
Along the walls where speaking marbles show
What worthies form the hallowed mold below;
Proud names, who once the reins of empire held;
In arms who triumphed, or in arts excelled'.
Thomas Tickell (1686-1740)
To the Earl of Warwick, on the Death of Mr Addison (1721)

That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear.

I falter where I firmly trod.
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92),
In Memoriam (1850)