Ozymandias
Published by Yazad Jal February 4th, 2005 in PoetryI 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 lips, 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.”
Written in 1818 by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), this poem is what I return to when I despair about the size and unending powers of government. May it suffer the same fate of Ozymandias.
But concentration of power in a few doesnt disappear, they just shift from one set of people to another…
I am sure in the 30s and 40s communists turned to the same poem when they despaired about unending powers of capitalists ;-)
Well, Rameses II is not completely forgotten - not while his glorious pyramids exist. What Shelley was probably alluding to was the inevitibility of ’sic transit gloria mundi’.
For me, this is not so much a question of economics as it is of aesthetics. Some of the most amazing monuments have been built by tyrants. And the Medicis/Moguls and the Stanfords/Mellons/Rockefellers have not been forgotten.
Well, the cholas and the pallavas and the pandyas haven’t been forgotten - and they built (especially the Cholas) some big big temples.
Also, the Cholas were particularly benevolent kings - and had a form of democracy called the “Kuda Olai system”
dude,
don’t confuse a system with an individual. individual people in power (both good and bad) will die.
Populations will ALWAYS need someone to manage & service them. right from the prehistoric tribe chiefs to today’s lalus :-))
take care,
Hey, thats my favourite poem too!
wonderful stuff, poetry.care to read my blog folks? i write poetry about things happening around me.
POETKIND
when ideas jel
like honey in combs
where do we go
to tales tell?
who will listen to
daisies in bloom
a orange sunrise
or tales of doom?
for a poets mind
will oft be cruel
unthinking of you
your toils and wails.