Well, I've never heard anyone say that Percy Bysshe Shelley was honourable, kind, unselfish, honest or even vaguely reliable - in fact many of the words I've heard used to describe Shelley's character are too rude to be used in a family blog - but he wrote Ozymandias.
It's short enough to quote in full.
Ozymandias
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".
However high you are, remember the wreck of Ozymandias.
Word To Use Today: wreck. This word is Scandinavian.
This bids fair to be my favourite poem in the world...I adore it and named Ozzy the cat in the Fantoras books after it! LOVE IT! And yes, the moral is good, too. As for Percy himself..we'll draw a veil over that....but he was a great poet!
ReplyDeleteOzzy is a very fine cat indeed, Adele, and the Fantoras are again available from all good book-selling websites.
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