Where are those who lived before us?

Ubi sunt motif is a poetic theme emphasizing the transience of youth, beauty, or life itself. The most famous ubi sunt lament is that of Francois Villon (15th c.) for the beautiful ladies now dead and gone begins with "But where are the snows of yesteryear?" The question may concern persons, places, or abstractions; it may open a poem or be used as a refrain.

A motif; from Medieval Latin motivus, "moving", is a unifying theme threaded through a work of art. In Thomas Wolfe's novels, the father-quest, not for his earthly father but for a power on which he could rely, is a dominant motif.