Should the whole frame of Nature round him break,

In ruin and confusion hurled,

He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack,

And stand secure amidst a falling world.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719): Horace. Ode iii. Book iii.

Final Ruin fiercely drives

Her ploughshare o'er creation.

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night Thoughts. Night ix. Line 167.

For those whom God to ruin has design'd,

He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.

John Dryden (1631-1701): The Hind and the Panther. Part iii. Line 2387.

Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay;

And if in death still lovely, lovelier there;

Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night Thoughts. Night iii. Line 104.

With grave

Aspect he rose, and in his rising seem'd

A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven

Deliberation sat, and public care;

And princely counsel in his face yet shone,

Majestic though in ruin: sage he stood,

With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear

The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look

Drew audience and attention still as night

Or summer's noontide air.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 300.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

Man marks the earth with ruin,—his control

Stops with the shore.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto iv. Stanza 179.

The day shall come, that great avenging day

Which Troy's proud glories in the dust shall lay,

When Priam's powers and Priam's self shall fall,

And one prodigious ruin swallow all.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Iliad of Homer. Book iv. Line 196.

Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the state.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Absalom and Achitophel. Part i. Line 174.

Prostrate the beauteous ruin lies; and all

That shared its shelter perish in its fall.

William Pitt (1759-1806): The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin. No. xxxvi.

Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!

Confusion on thy banners wait!

Though fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing,

They mock the air with idle state.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): The Bard. I. 1, Line 1.

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle i. Line 87.

On Prague's proud arch the fires of ruin glow,

His blood-dyed waters murmuring far below.

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844): Pleasures of Hope. Part i. Line 385.

The applause of list'ning senates to command,

The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation's eyes.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Stanza 16.

With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,

Confusion worse confounded.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book ii. Line 995.

And thou, vast ocean! on whose awful face

Time's iron feet can print no ruin-trace.

Robert Montgomery (1807-1855): The Omnipresence of the Deity. Part i.