All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients, perhaps proving that there really is nothing new under the sun.

So channel Lincoln, for we are met here on this battlefield where the better angels of our nature struggle against an enemy of their own thoughtfulness;

the lesser beings have no need of conscience, no regard to harm, no regret, living in the eternal now and continue as they are, unabated, a returning sickness the wheel pulls out from our species.

Tell Yeats we know again what rough beast lurches from the lips of Ozymandias to bask in the glow of the gaslights, fueled by self to exclusion of all others, a self regard that belies the very world beneath holding them up.

Call Shelley that before us still is the temple. Within see the promise of ruin.

The Sun King is mad, Rome burns and the music plays.