all things slowly weaken and fall to ruin

"The aged plowman sighs and shakes his head
again and again -- all that work gone for naught! --
compares the present times with times gone by,
and often remarks how lucky his father was.
Discouraged, the vintner tends his tattered vines,
curses the weather, and prays till heaven is tired;
he growls of an age long gone, when men were good,
and found life easy though their world was small,
and the land that each man held was then far less.
He does not see that all things slowly weaken
and fall to ruin, worn out by ages past."

[Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Book II, Lines 1164-1174]