Ozymandias:

                 the Self-proclaimed “King of Kings”

“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

  My favourite poem (excluding hymns, psalms and biblical wisdom literature) is probably Ozymandias.
  Ozymandias…..
   ….. say the name slowly and roll it over your tongue.
   It is a name filled with ancient dread and power (If you have a healthy and vibrant imagination like me that is!).
  In 1818 two friends wrote competing sonnets with the same name: (you’ve guessed it) Ozymandias. The more famous of the two final articles, written by Percy Shelley, is the most ironic and poignant of the pair. They tell of the fall of nations, and the unequivocal fate of emperors and tyrants. Have a read and see what you think.

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.’

     The poem has a ring of Isaiah 39-40 about it. The prophet Isaiah writes an account set in the days of King Hezekiah of Judah. Hezekiah, on the whole, was a good godly King. However we learn that after God had blessed his reign with peace, stability and wealth, a number of envoys (or ambassadors) arrived from the local superpower: Babylon. The King seized the opportunity to show off his wealth and power; he showed the men every storeroom, every treasury and every armoury in his capital. Through his prophet, God rebuked Hezekiah for his pride. Isaiah chapter 40 is a stinging reminder that all of the might and power of men ultimately is worthless. God describes the nations as ‘a drop in a bucket’ and as ‘dust on a set of scales’.  God doesn’t stop there; we are reminded that, just like grass withers and flowers fade, all men will die eventually. To God, Isaiah writes, mankind is like a colony of grasshoppers running and jumping around on the surface of planet earth.

   Horace Smith’s version of Ozymandias helps us to remember that, like the Egyptian super-state before us, the British and American civilisations will eventually crumble (some would say it has already began!).

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

  Thankfully Isaiah chapter 40 tells us of someone whom we can trust, someone who will never crumble or be forgotten, someone who’s name is mightier than any Empire or civilisation. The Bible tells us that there is one with whom we can entrust our hopes, dreams and even our eternal souls.

    Have you not known? Have you not heard?   The LORD is the everlasting God,        the Creator of the ends of the earth.
    He does not faint or grow weary;
        his understanding is unsearchable.
    He gives power to the faint,
        and to him who has no might he increases strength.
    Even youths shall faint and be weary,
        and young men shall fall exhausted;
    but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
        they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
    they shall run and not be weary;
        they shall walk and not faint.(Isaiah 40:28-31 ESV)