epitaph on a tyrant

With figures like Mubarak and Gadhafi dominating the news lately, and the fact that you can't open a history book without stumbling across one brutal despot or another, and finally because I've been teaching students about Hitler and Stalin this past week, I have had tyrants on the brain.

For your reading pleasure:

caligul

" Epitaph on a Tyrant"
 
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And he was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with
          laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

- W.H. Auden