Ozymandias

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Per the varied comments on yesterday’s post titled The Poets’ Scrolls:

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 sand stretch far away.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

.

And a bit of Ecclesiastes helps put statues and scrolls in their proper places for PG.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

. . . .

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

. . . .

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

~ Ecclesiastes 2, 4-11, 14

PG understands that “vexation of spirit” in the last line is translated from the Hebrew original: “striving after wind; thus, frustration.”

The whole thing is less optimistic than PG’s normal outlook on life, but perspective on contemporary understandings and the issues and disputes of the day can provide a beneficial point of view.

 

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7 thoughts on “Ozymandias”

  1. A solid grasp of the classics, including the Bible, is a joy in a potential reader.

    One of the inspirations for my WIP is the Book of Job, and I have found an unfortunate percentage of readers don’t even know what that is. People who grew up in other cultures would not necessarily have biblical knowledge, but Westerners?

    I don’t depend on a reader knowing that – after all, I’m looking for an international audience – but of certain people, I had minimal expectations. And the KJV quotations I use, mostly as epigraphs and epitaphs, are chosen for their explicit content, so you don’t have to know them before you read.

    But some of this comes, in my head, under the heading of ‘basic literacy.’

  2. PG, lines 4 and 8 of Ozymandias did not read right to me so I checked and found that they should be:

    Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

    and

    The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

    though possibly without the comma in line 8. In fact once I’d looked at Wikipedia and three of my paper books I found that the spelling could change, mock’d for mocked for example, and each version had its own slightly different punctuation.

    Like antares I was pleased to see the quotes from the King James version of Ecclesiastes; a favourite of mine which at times sums up my feelings about the world, at other times not so much.

    • Thanks for pointing out the errors, Mike.

      I guess I should have checked the language in the original source I used for my post, but assumed that Shelley poetry would have been proofed by now.

      • You’re welcome.

        The trouble is that there are multiple versions of everything on the internet and how do you find the reliable ones? Song lyric versions are worse: I think quite a few are based on people listening to the song and taking notes, which is rarely going to turn out well.

  3. PG, Thank you for the quotes from Ecclesiastes, my favorite book of the Bible. Contains all the philosophy and guidance I have ever needed. I am particularly fond of 3:13: “[T]hat every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labor, it is the gift of God.”

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