Where have all the cowboys gone?

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.

Sometimes thought to indicate nostalgia, 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?")

For his fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote a similar poem, composed by his fictional people of Rohan who are partially modelled after the Anglo-Saxons. Part of this goes:

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing? [...]
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.