Ozymandias BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

[Swede]

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 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.”

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Thank you, my dear Swede!

It's perfect for this turbulent night.

All things, even those that seem unconquerable, pass away.

The only constant is change.

[Swede]

6. I can't believe the mess this is.

A lot of people are gonna die because of the orange idiot.

[elleng]

2. Thanks.

Interesting, a friend and I remembered this a week ago; not something that comes up often.

[vlyons]

15. I remembered this poem yesterday too

nt

[Mme. Defarge]

3. A personal favorite

and it couldn’t be more timely and appreciated.

[Glorfindel]

4. "Nothing beside remains." The three bleakest words ever.

Thank you for posting one of my favorite poems, Swede. I have also been listening to "The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot recited by Jeremy Irons and Dame Eileen Atkins on youtube lately.
"I will show you fear in a handful of dust..."

[Ponietz]

5. The End of the World by ARCHIBALD MACLEISH

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly to top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all.

[Hekate]

9. MacLeish, Eliot, e.e. cummings, Yeats, Marge Piercy ...the poets know

How I love MacLeish. I went straight to Epistle to be left in the Earth after reading your post.

[Ponietz]

17. 🌬

Epistle To Be Left in the Earth

…It is colder now
There are many stars
We are drifting
North by the Great bear
The leaves are falling
The water is stone in the scooped rocks
To southward
Red sun gray air
The crows are
Slow on their crooked wings
the jays have left us
Long since we passed the flares of Orion
Each man believes in his heart he will die
Many have written last thoughts and last letters
None know if our deaths are now or forever
None know if this wandering earth will be found

We lie down and the snow covers our garments
I pray you
You (if any open this writing)
Make in your mouths the words that were our names
I will tell you all we have learned
I will tell you everything
The earth is round
There are springs under the orchards
The loam cuts with a blunt knife
beware of
Elms in thunder
The lights in the sky are stars
We think they do not see
We think also
The tree do not know nor the leaves of the grasses
hear us
The birds are too ignorant
Do not listen
Do not stand at dark in open windows
We before you have heard this
They are voices
They are not words at all but the wind rising
Also none among us has seen God
(…We have thought often
The flaws of sun in the late and driving weather
Pointed to one tree but it was not so)
As for the nights I warn you the nights are dangerous
The wind changes at night and the dreams come

It is very cold
there are strange stars near Arcturus

Voices are crying an unknown name in the sky
Archibald Macleish

[Karadeniz]

7. Love both the poems...thanks!❤ I'm also thinking of the one about a beast that is eating

His own liver. When asked how he liked it, he said it was bitter, but he liked it because it was his.

[skip fox]

18. Stephen Crane

[Cousin Dupree]

8. Anyone see this in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs?

https://m.

[Hekate]

10. Thank you Swede. Thanks, all of you. Poets know.

[crazytown]

11. ...

[burrowowl]

12. Thanks Swede!

[PatrickforO]

13. One of my favorites.

[ZZenith]

14. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs nearly ruined this poem for me.

Nearly, but not quite.

It now has two layers of sadness.

[Straw Man]

16. W.B. Yeats: "The Second Coming"

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming