Whenever we find ourselves believing, as we too often do,that we have discovered The Ultimate Truth, The Absolute Way Things Should Be, or whenever think We Are The Best and Will Last Forever, it's good to drift through old poetry collections (among other things. Having our kids study history in a meaningful way would also be extremely helpful).
So here is some relevant poetry bythat old Romantic, Percy Bysshe Shelley:
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!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
And a verse, number LII to be exact, from Adonais. Adonais is a long, long pastoral elegy following what might be called a classical model. To the modern American reader, it is embarassingly lush, extravagant and sentimental filled with excruciating purple prose. However, the following verse is one of my all time favorites:
