Dear Liza,
Your great grandma, Billie Evans, read a lot of poems. Those that she really loved, she memorized. “So I could always have them with me,” she said.
“Ozymandias”, by Percy Shelly, was one of those. She loved the description of the great sculpture, now in ruins, in the middle of a desolate land. Mostly, she loved the twist at the end. Have a read, then I’ll give you an update on the Big Man himself.
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Shelly wrote the poem in 1818, when Europe was fascinated with ancient Egypt after Napoleon’s army there brought back bits and pieces of the crumbled civilization. Broken chunks of mighty statues were all that was left. Shelly saw the futile and fleeting nature of power, and gave his take on it.
All this came to mind this morning because of two stories in the news.
Archeologists in Egypt have found what appears to be the top half of the statue of Ozymandias (also called Ramses II, the pharaoh named in Exodus), the same statue that inspired Shelly.
I’m thinking about this while watching the news about claims of “absolute immunity.” I love that Ramses II is still broken and that Shelly’s poem is still wonderful. Poetry outlasts Power.
Love,
Grandma Judy
Dear Liza 