“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.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Roses are red
Violets are blue
If you wear a cat on your foot
Than it becomes a shoe”
blue bysshe unicorn
That poem always reminded me of Babylon. This once great city was prophesied to be destroyed and never rebuilt, which of course was foolish. It stood in the crossroads of two great trade routes and no way would it be destroyed . . . until it was. No way it would never be rebuilt . . . until it wasn’t. When I saw Saddam Hussein unveil his plans to rebuild Babylon (with drawings and a war chest to begin, I said that is a dead man walking . . and not much later he was.
If Percy Bysshe Shelley had flourished in the 1990s, his nickname might have been Percy V-Dot 42 Bysshe Shelley.
Okay, even I don't think that deserves a rimshot.
My favorite.