Two different poems and two different view point (I)

 OZYMANDIAS

BJP to remain in power for next 50 years: Amit Shah. -- The times of India news dated sep 9 2018

Percy Bysshe Shelley is a rebel English poet who was born in the period called Romanticism. He is popular for his social and political views. His lyrical poems inspired our own Subramanya Bharathi. Rabindra Nath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi. Romanticism is generally opposed to classicism or old established values. Romanticism is defined as attitude or intellectual orientation that characterized many works of literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism, and historiography in Western civilization over a period from the late 18th to mid-19th century.

Ozymandias is a poem about a ruined antique sculpture written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The poem stands out for its strong vocal message that nothing lasts forever.  Even a mighty ruler is forgotten and fade away save only his ruined statue. The arrogance and pride in building colossal statues met at the end decay and ruin. Shelley narrates the present condition of the statue through the traveler who brought back the news of the forgotten monument. The statue was half sunken in the dusty desert sand. yet, thanks to the sculptor who had read the passions of the forgotten king well, the sneer of power he held was clearly portrayed in the sculpture.

Gustav Flaubert mockingly jokes about: “Graffiti and bird-droppings are the only two things in the ruins of Egypt that give any indication of life. The most worn stone doesn’t grow a blade of grass; it falls into powder, like a mummy, and that is all…Often you see a tall, straight obelisk, with a long white stain down its entire length, like a drapery – wider at the top and tapering towards the base. That is from the vultures, who have been coming there to shit for centuries. It is a very handsome effect and has a curious symbolism. It is as though Nature said to the monuments of Egypt: ‘You will have none of me? You will not nourish the seed of the lichen? Eh bien, merde. I’ll shit on you.” ( From The Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1830-1857, selected, edited and translated by Francis Steegmuller (1981), p.119)

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.”

But at the end,

“Look on my works, you mighty and despair

Nothing beside remains.”  -

These lines brought to my memory another great poem-Elegy written on a Country church yard by Thomas Gray. The following elegant lines tell us about the futility of power, wealth etc. Like, Shelley, he has also heralded that power, wealth and title led to the grave in other ward to be buried and forgotten. I don’t know whether Shelley had read this poem written some 75 years earlier.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,

         And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.

         The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Again, he reminds us,

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

         Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,

         Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.

Edward Young was another 18th century poet who was famous for his poem Night Thoughts. He was a clergy man by profession. Death of his wife and step-daughter one after another set him upon thoughts about Death and other miseries of life. The following lines clearly expressed the vagaries of life.

Each Moment has its sickle, emulous

Of Time's enormous scythe, whose ample sweep

Strikes empires from the root; each Moment plays

His little weapon in the narrower sphere

Of sweet domestic comfort, and cuts down

The fairest bloom of sublunary bliss.—

(Edward Young’s Night Thoughts. Line 193-8)

Finally, our old Khayyam who lived 1000 years before us cautioned thus

Ah, make the most of what we may yet spend,

Before we too into the Dust descend;

Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie;

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and — sans End!

Third Reich will rule another 1000 years roared Hitler in a party rally at Nuremberg in 1934. In fact it lasted 11 years precisely.