The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word desolation as follows; 
1. A state of complete emptiness or destruction. 2. Great unhappiness or loneliness. 
Neither definition matches the final image in Thomas Cole’s suite The Course of Empire, which is a scene full of life, although none of it is human. Plants have reclaimed the ruins of a classicised city, and the picture plane is populated by birdlife, including a nest atop the foreground pillar, encapsulating the potential for regeneration in the landscape. Perhaps this reading of the images is informed by a 21st century vision of the quiet beauty of nature’s power to reclaim past human folly, but the title and feeling evoked are hard to reconcile.