Ozymandias

As I mentioned in a post a few days ago, my first teaching assignment in my student teaching will be Percy Shelley's poem "Ozymandias." I chose this for a few reasons: it's short (it's 14 lines long), it pertains to what the kids are studying now (the epic of Gilgamesh) and the first time I read it, however many years ago, I understood it right away.

Shelley wrote the poem in 1817, and it was published in 1818, perhaps in response to the British Museum purchasing a large chunk of a statue of Ramesses II (Ozymandias is an alternative name for him). It is one of his most famous works, and is frequently anthologized.

What I like about the poem is that it is so subtly ironic. In fact, it could be considered funny. Here we have a traveler to an ancient, dusty land who finds the ruins of a statue, thousands of years old (Ramesses II ruled about 1270 B.C., some two thousand years before the poem was written). The inscription on the statue proclaims the greatness of the king who commissioned it, but, as all things become, is now a faint memory. It's humbling but important to realize that everything is temporary, whether it is an empire, a mountain, or a person. As Kansas sang so many years ago, "all we are is dust in the wind."

In teaching the lesson I'm going to start with a clip of the ending of the very first Planet of the Apes film, which is one of the best shock endings of any movie. Of course, Charlton Heston, who all the time thinks he's on some distant planet (even though the apes speak English) finds that he is indeed home, on Earth, many years in the future. He knows this by coming across the ruins of the Statue of Liberty. I think this is instructive because it reminds us that even the mighty American empire will one day come to an end. We've been a world power just under 100 years. The Roman Empire lasted about six-hundred years. The British Empire, about three hundred. At their height, they never thought it would end. I think we can see an end, if only because the world is such a small place now.

I will also point out that Shelley was one of the greatest of the Romantic poets, and along with Lord Byron, was somewhat akin to a rock star in his day. He was an outspoken atheist at a time when that sort of thing wasn't looked kindly upon (it isn't today, either). He was married to Mary Shelley, famous for writing Frankenstein (there are those who think he helped her with it, or wrote it himself). He lived fast and died young, drowning just short of his 30th birthday.

So, since it is so short and no longer in copyright, is "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.