The Task

• " the fatal hour Was register’d in heaven ere time began." - pre-destination
• We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works Die too: the deep foundations that we lay, Time ploughs them up, and not a trace remains.

  [c.f Ozymandias - "Round the decayOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away."]
• • In this moment of deep melancholic musing, humanity is essentially annihilated by a blanketing indistinction of death; everything becomes dust, time is indiscriminate and will ensure that “not a trace remains.”