Careful Words

wreck (n.)

wreck (v.)

You shall not pile, with servile toil,

Your monuments upon my breast,

Nor yet within the common soil

Lay down the wreck of power to rest,

Where man can boast that he has trod

On him that was "the scourge of God."

Edward Everett (1794-1865): Alaric the Visigoth.

Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory,

And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour,

Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in;

A sure and safe one, though thy master missed it.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry VIII. Act iii. Sc. 2.