Ozymandias
As I read the reports about the vainglorious tyrant Muammar Gaddafi being lowered into his cold, sandswept desert grave - I was reminded of a poem from my childhood.
Ozymandias - by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Almost two hunded years later - Shelley's words are the perfect rebuke to another despot - another mighty 'King of Kings' - who ruled his people through terror and fear.
No more - because the tides of history have swept over Colonel Gaddafi and his family - and the people of Libya are no longer in despair.
Instead they look to the future with mixture of great excitement and optimism - despite all their problems.
Ozymandias was first published in 1818 - apparently.
Yet Shelley's powerful prose found its perfect echo down the ages - on a dark night in the Sahara Desert - only yesterday.
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".
Ozymandias - by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Almost two hunded years later - Shelley's words are the perfect rebuke to another despot - another mighty 'King of Kings' - who ruled his people through terror and fear.
No more - because the tides of history have swept over Colonel Gaddafi and his family - and the people of Libya are no longer in despair.
Instead they look to the future with mixture of great excitement and optimism - despite all their problems.
Ozymandias was first published in 1818 - apparently.
Yet Shelley's powerful prose found its perfect echo down the ages - on a dark night in the Sahara Desert - only yesterday.
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".
