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07/28/2006 Entry: "Ozzymandias"

It's Ozzymandias time! Just like P, B, and Jelly; it's Percy Bysshe Shelley (husband of Frankenstein, y'all). One of my all time favorite poems.

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 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.

I once read that there was an ancient monument to a ruler where a conniving artisan made the plaque out of a perishable clay, concealing a stone engraving of his own name. The top layer survived the ruler, and I guess also the artisan. But within a century it was weathered away leaving only the name of the master.

Will that be the fate of our times as well? Must we settle for the solace that one day long after we are dust that those who pull the strings for our idiot leaders are finally exposed?