Earthly Kingdoms

Las Meninas The Family of Philip IV  Diego Velazquez

The Kingdom 
                  by Rudyard Kipling
Now we are come to our Kingdom,
And the State is thus and thus;
Our legions wait at the Palace gate--
Little it profits us.
Now we are come to our Kingdom!

Now we are come to our Kingdom,
And the Crown is ours to take--
With shame and fear for our daily cheer,
And heaviness at night.
Now we are come for our Kingdom!

Now we are come for our Kingdom,
And the Realm is ours by right,
With shame and fear for our daily cheer,
And heaviness at night.
Now we are come to our Kingdom!

Now we are come to our Kingdom,
But my love's eyelids fall.
All that I wrought for, all that I fought for,
Delight her nothing at all.
My crown is of withered leaves,
For she sits in the dust and grieves.
Now we are come for our Kingdom!

Antiquity's Disquietude

Approach of the Simoon, Desert of Gizeh  David Roberts

Ozymandias
                by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".