Nothing Is Forever

It's National Poetry Month, and I have spent the week racking (or is it "wracking?") my brain and the internet for a poem to express my feelings about these "interesting times" we live in. I finally thought of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias," but when I searched for the poem, I discovered that there are, in fact, two "Ozymandiases" ("Ozymandii?")—one written by Shelley, the other by his friend and fellow poet, Horace Smith. Here are both poems:

Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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.

Ozymandias (aka "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below"*)
by Horace Smith

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Naught but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

According to Wikipedia, both poems were likely inspired by "the announcement of the British Museum's acquisition of a large fragment of a statue of Ramesses II..." You may remember Ramesses (or "Ramses") as the pharaoh of Exodus, portrayed by Yul Brynner in "The Ten Commandments." "Ozymandias" is what the Greeks called him, and if the Greeks wrote about him—well, in those days, that pretty much meant he was world famous. He was the most powerful and longest-reigning pharaoh in Egypt's history—not to mention the most egotistical. He ordered the construction of numerous temples and palaces bearing his name, and the erection of enormous statues bearing his image.

Statue Fragment in British Museum

You know how some people think they are "God's Gift?" Well, this guy thought he was a god—literally. Yes, I know the word "literally" is used far too frequently and generally incorrectly, but as an English major, I know the time and place to use it, and this is one of those times and places. Ramesses believed himself to be literally immortal.

He was wrong, of course, and that's what both "Ozymandias" poems are about.

Nothing is forever.

And these days, that's a very comforting thought.


*Smith changed his poem's title to avoid confusion with Shelley's, which may have something to do with it's having been all but forgotten. "On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below," does not exactly roll off the tongue, nor is it an easy title to remember.