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.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Still like that poem– it snuck past the “all poetry must suck” thing because it’s depressing and a classic, kept me from getting soured on poetry. (Then I found Kipling, recognized lines from my uncles randomly quoting, and off to the races!)
Please forgive me, Don. Just want you to know that I used DuckDuckGo to get here because I could not get here using Google Chrome.
Where/ when was the photo taken?
Tripura, India. March 5, 2018:
https://www.latestly.com/social-viral/lenin-statue-toppled-in-tripura-videos-of-statues-taken-down-in-the-world-from-stalin-to-saddam-53463.html