Musing - Ozymandias

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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

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I didn’t really realize the depth of this poem when I first read it when I was in middle school. I came across it a couple of years later when researching ideas for D&D adventures I re-read it and understood its deeper meanings. A man from a kingdom that has fallen, Rome, Britian and soon the US and all the others after will fall there is no stopping it. Empires are not meant to stand, no matter how glorious or how powerful. Time will render them asunder.

All that is left is ruins for those that come after us to puzzle over why did this empire rise and why did it fall. However the lesson that man seems to constantly fail to learn. Those who fail from history are doomed to repeat it.