Ubi sunt

Ubi sunt (literally "where are... [they]") is a phrase taken from the Latin Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?, meaning "Where are those who were before us?" Ubi nunc...? ("Where now?") is a common variant.

Sometimes interpreted to indicate nostalgia, the ubi sunt motif is actually a meditation on mortality and life's transience.

Ubi sunt is a phrase that begins several Latin medieval poems and occurs, for example, in the second stanza of the goliardic song "De Brevitate Vitae", known from its incipit as "Gaudeamus Igitur": "Ubi sunt qui ante nos / In mundo fuere?", "Where are those who, before us, existed in the world?" The theme was the common property of medieval Latin poets: Cicero may not have been available, but Boethius' line was known: Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii manent?

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, Mais où sont les neiges d'antan? ("Where are the snows of yesteryear?"), a refrain taken up in the bitter and ironic Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weill "Nannas Lied", expressing the short-term memory without regrets of a hard-bitten prostitute, in the following refrain:

Wo sind die Tränen von gestern abend?
Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?

Another famous medieval French writer, Rutebeuf, wrote a poem called Poèmes de l'infortune ("Poems of the misfortune" – or bad luck) which contains those verses:

Que sont mes amis devenus
Que j'avais de si près tenus
Et tant aimés ?

Roughly: "Where are my friends I used to embrace so close and loved so much". In the second half of the 20th century, the singer Léo Ferré made this poem famous by adding music. The song was called Pauvre Rutebeuf (Poor – or sad – Rutebeuf).

...
Wikipedia