Posted on 06/13/2020 2:26:35 PM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley - 1792-1822
I met a traveler 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."
Name ‘em ping ‘em
“Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.” is one of the greatest single lines in poetry, I think. It’s so evocative.
}:-)4
Um...headline might need a slight edit. :)
“Legless legs”? or “Trunkless legs”. or “Bare Standing legs”?
I read someone’s version here on FR - he called it “Obamamandias.”
MLK statues will be next.
Soon the statue to the unknown politician.
Nothing new.
“For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.”
Acts 23:17
"In antiquity, Ozymandias (Ὀσυμανδύας) was a Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II.
Shelley began writing his poem in 1817, soon after the British Museum's announcement that they had acquired a large fragment of a statue of Ramesses II from the 13th century BCE; some scholars believe Shelley was inspired by the acquisition. The 7.25-short-ton (6.58 t; 6,580 kg) fragment of the statue's head and torso had been removed in 1816 from the mortuary temple of Ramesses (the Ramesseum) at Thebes by the Italian adventurer Giovanni Battista Belzoni. It had been expected to arrive in London in 1818, but did not arrive until 1821."
The article is about the poem but also contains information about its origin, as excerpted above. It also contains a photograph of the statue in the British Museum. (Great place! Well worth the trip.)
The “Trunk” would be a body, hence 2 legs with nothing above.
Ozymandias was arrogant, so full of himself ( reminds us of any groups today?) thought he was the king of kings, yet nothing remains but decay. Shelly was telling us only one King of Kings!
I’ve repented ...should’ve fired that darned PR guy who came up w/that inscription! ;^)
some people built a marble monument
upon a high hill
and it came upon them and crushed them
e.e. cummings
I try to memorize a classic poem or soliloquy every year. This is one of the first I did.
Cool.
I’ve always paired Ozymandias with Yeat’s “The Second Coming”:
The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Both are instructive for times such as these.
http://i.pinimg.com/236x/8f/2d/a2/8f2da2277a6120ebec030b1b81f1d4bf—things-to-watch-prism.jpg
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-23528902
[snip] The fall of tyrants is a theme which was always close to Shelley’s heart. Born in 1792, he was part of the radical, anti-establishment generation of writers who became known as the Romantics - his contemporaries and friends included Byron, Wordsworth and Keats. Much of Shelley’s work was overtly political, and Ozymandias had its roots in the struggle for democracy and nationalism raging across Europe at that time. [/snip]
Period.
“BCE”, really Dude?
The text in quotations, including the BCE, is a direct lift from the cited article.
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