The previous post of W.B. Yeats “The Second Coming” in the Classic Poetry Group was a reminder that troubled times can inspire and instruct — if we are awake to the warnings those like Yeats give. There is a tendency to think the world starts anew with each of us — and in a sense it does — but there’s also the fact that elements of human nature remain constant.
Which brings us to Percy Bysshe Shelley and “Ozymandias”, an 1817 work inspired by a story of a ruined statue of an Egyptian pharaoh.
Here’s the technical details:
“Ozymandias” is a sonnet, a fourteen-line poem metered in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is somewhat unusual for a sonnet of this era; it does not fit a conventional Petrarchan pattern, but instead interlinks the octave (a term for the first eight lines of a sonnet) with the sestet (a term for the last six lines), by gradually replacing old rhymes with new ones in the form ABABACDCEDEFEF.
All this for a statue
“...whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read...”
Further (and these are the lines that resonate):
”My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Compare and contrast with:
“As far as Puerto Rico is concerned, we’ve had tremendous reviews from government officials, as we did in Texas, and we have in Louisiana, and as we have in Florida from Governor Scott and … Greg Abbott. Great governors. And this morning the governor made incredible statements about how well we’re doing.”
And
“We’re going to do far more than anyone else would ever be able to do. And it’s being recognized as such.”
I’m going to make a wild guess (and maybe a prayer) that there will never be a giant statue of Trump somewhere, and certainly hope that there won’t be a vast ruin, but…
Here’s the entire poem for your consideration:
Percy Shelley's "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.