Ozymandias – It Always Ends

The nineteenth century British poet Percy Shelley wrote his most famous poem, Ozymandias, in 1819. The short 14-line sonnet is considered one of the most important poems ever written in the English language, and is a commentary on the inevitable fall from power of all tyrants.  

“Ozymandias” was the Greek name for the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II who was the most powerful ruler in the world in the thirteenth century BC.

Shelley’s classic poem observed the fallen statue of Ramesses II that lay abandoned in the Luxor desert before its transportation to the British Museum in London in 1822. All that remained of the huge statue by then was the head-and-torso.

The inscription on the statue read:

“King of Kings Ozymandias am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work.”

The two themes of the poem, so beautifully written, are the inevitable decline of rulers and their pretensions to greatness.

Across the history of planet Earth, there has been a constant theme of dictatorial rule, control of humanity in various ways, and attempts to reduce the freedom of the individual, whether in writing, speech, movement, or thought. Today on Earth we are faced once again with a ruling elite who use propaganda (thought-control) and censorship in equal portions to control humanity.

Just wait awhile and the tyrannical regime will be gone.

It always ends.

The poem itself is worth a careful read:

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.

(Percy Shelley, 1819)

6 February 2023

[Book review: Somerset Maughan – “The Moon and a Sixpence”]