Monday, June 28, 2010

Poetry

The following is one of my favourite poems. Thought I might share it with you all.

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveler 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 upon 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.

Percy Byshe Shelley
1792 -1822
English Romantic Poet



8 comments:

  1. It's kind of nice to know we disappear into eternity...I find that comforting in a strange way.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Or we return to the earth from whenst we came? I think I like the thought of returning to nature. We are nature so it makes sense that we should return to nature. We are all but grains of sand in the eternal wheel of time.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "And we will search, with looks and words of love,
    For hidden thoughts, each lovlier than the last,
    Our unexhausted spirits; and like lutes
    Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind,
    Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new,
    From difference sweet where discord cannot be;
    And hither come, sped on the charmed winds,
    Which meet from all the points of heaven, as bees,
    From every flower aereal Enna feeds...
    (Prometheus Unbound from Scene Three)...

    The Songs of a Deep-Ecologist:

    "The earth, the air, the water the fire return, return, return..."

    "Earth my body, water my blood, air my breath, and fire is my spirit,
    Earth am I, water am I, air and fire and spirit am I,
    Earth my body, water my blood, air my breath, and fire is my spirit..."

    Do we really disappear, or re-appear or do we remain and re-emerge...??

    ReplyDelete
  4. ROME AND NATURE

    Rome has fallen, ye see it lying
    heaped in undistinguished ruin:
    Nature is alone undying.

    Percy Bysshe Shelley

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nature regenerates, yet in some cases nature becomes extinct due to external influences, are we perpetrating our own extinction through lack of understanding of who and what we are?

    ReplyDelete
  6. McCabeandco, that was one of our Druid prayers......earth is my body, water is my blood.....:D

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hello FT. That is such a cool poem, if just to remind us that human greatness is but a mere blip in the universal matter of things.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Sarah, I like it myself and you are absolutely right. We are but grains of sand in the universal desert of life. Very cool!!

    ReplyDelete