Weekly Photo Challenge: Half-Light (Ozymandias)

Posted on March 26, 2016

I don’t matter. Ultimately, nobody does.

And if there’s one poem to keep you focused on your own mortality and complete inconsequentiality in the great scheme of things, it must be Shelley’s ‘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.”

In other words, however great or important you may think you are, even your most stupendous monuments will not stand the test of time.

Specifically, ‘Ozymandias’ refers to a massive ruined statue of the Pharoah Rameses II. Unfortunately, I don’t have any images of Egyptian ruins, but I do have quite a few showing the ruins of what must once have been (well, still is, even in its current state) the awe-inspiring city of Petra, in Jordan. Including this one:

No doubt the Nabateans, in constructing their ‘rose-red city’, were out to impress, inviting visitors to ‘Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

Weekly Photo Challenge: Half-Light

Category: Weekly Photo Challenge Tagged: Half-Light, Monumental, Ozymandias, Petra, Shelley, Weekly Photo Challenge, weeklyphotochallenge