The White House of Cards

[Mme. Defarge]

That’s all.

[NBachers]

1. Masque of the Red Death

https://www.poemuseum.org/the-masque-of-the-red-death

[tanyev]

2. Trumpymandias

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.”

[PatSeg]

3. That is powerful and perfect for this moment in history

[lagomorph777]

5. Ozymandias was Rameses II, who probably pilfered most of the works he gets credited for.

And then he died anyway.

[Mme. Defarge]

6. One of my very favorites,

which I have committed to memory.

[lagomorph777]

4. The Plague Posse

punished for pompous pretension.