Ubi sunt?

Ubi sunt (literally "where are...") is a phrase taken from the Latin Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?, meaning "Where are those who were before us?"Ubi sunt is a phrase that begins several Latin medieval poems. It refers to the tone of the poem, and can even be used to indicate the tone of another work, such as Beowulf. The phrase also occurs in the second stanza of De Brevitate Vitae.Sometimes considered to be a nostalgic longing for the clichéd "good old days", the ubi sunt motif is actually a meditation on mortality and life's transience. The medieval French poet François Villon famously echoes the sentiment in the Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis ("Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past") with his question, Où sont les neiges d'antan? ("Where are the snows of yesteryear?"). The Spanish poet Jorge Manrique wrote some equally famous stanzas about contemporaries that death had taken away.
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