random lines of poetry

I woke up early this morning around 6:30 thanks to Claritin-induced sleep deprivation. I started hacking on server code for automatically building "tables of contents" for very large database tables. I'm using a bunch of Yeats poems, and The Iliad as sample rows in the database. It makes debugging a lot more fun when the data is interesting. It's also a great way to read random lines of poetry. Here is a great stanza from the Iliad:

Generations of men are like the leaves.
In winter, winds blow them down to earth,
but then, when spring season comes again,
budding wood grows more. And so with men--
one generation grows, another dies away. (Iliad 6.181-5)



Did you know the phrase "another one bites the dust" is lifted from the Iliad?

"Grant that my sword may pierce the shirt of Hector about his heart, and that full many of his comrades may bite the dust as they fall dying round him."