King of Kings

For the past 25 years Gordon Brown's writ has run ruthlessly throughout the Scottish Labour Party; few big decisions were ever made without Gordon's blessing including,  for example, the election of the last three Labour leaders in Scotland: Wendy Alexander, Iain Gray and Johann Lamont. 

But things are about to change as Gordon gets ready to announce his departure from front line politics with Labour membership in Scotland dwindling down to 10,000 or less and the Party at its lowest ever standing in the opinion polls.

Meanwhile popular support for the SNP (Labour's arch rivals) is now at all all-time high and under a new youthful leader, Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP has enjoyed an incredible surge from 20,000 to 90,000 individual members, despite ending up on the losing side of the Scottish independence referendum. 

And such a ruinous end to a political career reminded me of this post from the blog site archive and while Gordon Brown is nothing like Colonel Gaddafi, he does bear a striking resemblance to Ozymandias if you ask me, particularly in the ironic line:

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"    

Ozymandias (26 October 2011)

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".