Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Chapter 11 Page 28

— and he always had an extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the moment in whatever he took up — he was almost saddened by the reflection of the ruin that time brought on beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any rate, had escaped that. Summer followed summer, and the yellow jonquils bloomed and died many times, and nights of horror repeated the story of their shame, but he was unchanged. No winter marred his face or stained his flowerlike bloom. How different it was with material things! Where had they passed to? Where was the great crocus-coloured robe, on which the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked by brown girls for the pleasure of Athena?

Where the huge velarium that Nero had stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan sail of purple on which was represented