You could do the phrase "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." These are obviously the unalienable rights guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence. For example, you could say something like "without these unalienable rights, the country would be just a mess." Hope this helps!
The lines that describe the decline and fall of the city are the following:
- These wall-stones are wondrous — calamities crumpled them, these city-sites crashed, the work of giants corrupted.
- The roofs have rushed to earth, towers in ruins.
- The halls of the city once were bright: there were many bath-houses, a lofty treasury of peaked roofs, many troop-roads, many mead-halls filled with human-joys until that terrible chance changed all that.
- Days of misfortune arrived—blows fell broadly—
death seized all those sword-stout men—their idol-fanes were laid waste —the city-steads perished.
- This place has sunk into ruin, been broken into heaps,
The answer is corruption,love and revenge.
Skills? I wouldn't say skills, but you think about what you red and write, you use what you know from your brain to basically understand words in a book or even when you write them down, etc. If this doesn't help, look up all the skills of reading and writing on google =)