Here, now, a pretty story's told.

Ah, little thought these grand old lords, that lived and roared before the flood, that they would come to this.

Here, King Media, look and learn." He looked; and saw a picture petrified, and plain as any on the pediments of Petra.
It seemed a stately banquet of the dead, where lords in skeletons were ranged around a board heaped up with fossil fruits, and flanked with vitreous vases, grinning like empty skulls.

There they sat, exchanging rigid courtesies.

One's hand was on his stony heart; his other pledged a lord who held a hollow beaker.