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OZYMANDIAS

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OZYMANDIAS

You’re probably not in the mood for a 19th century sonnet that wonderfully exhibits the human ego behind the desire to remain

permanent, so you’ll be spared.

The sonnet in question (by Percy Bysshe Shelley) refers to King Ozymandias, a man whose arrogance lives beyond him in a stone

statue that he thinks will remain for eons and eons– that all the people of the world after him will remember and know the name

“Ozymandias” for his greatness.

But…

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nothing lasts forever.

And so the sands and storms gave his statue a heavy beating, bringing it crumbling to pieces.

King Ozymandias was trying to do exactly what we’re all doing

unconsciously today. He was trying to last forever, to stand firm against the changing sands, to give time his

middle finger.

But he didn’t have the Internet.

We do, and because of that, it ’s become easier for all of us to last longer.

But more on what this could mean further down (the) mortalitybook.

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Here is that sonnet.

Ozymandias I met a Traveler from an antique land, Who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desart. 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 heat that fed: AnAnd on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.” Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair! No thing beside remains. Round the decay Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

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