A once majestic, conqueror of oceans, travelling magnitudes of distance at a time, now sits rusting along an abandoned coast.
A sad sight indeed. It reminds me of this poem, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, titled “Ozymandias”, which goes like this:
“I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who saidโ”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 first time I read this, I was lost, it was nonsensical. What was this, a man travelling in the desert, and then coming across a broken statue? What?
So i reread it.
And again.
And then it struck me.
See this is the thing about poetry.
Such short words, but an essay could be orchestrated from but a few proses. A thousand words.
So this man, he’s travelling in the desert, and he records what he sees.
Amongst the sand, 2 trunkless legs of stone, legs without a body. Nearby, partially sunken in the sand, a shattered visage, or face, of a seemingly powerful, angry man, encapsulated by the original sculpturer that crafted it beautifully, captured the brutal nature of this man this stone was meant to encapsulate. And then the next line,
“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”
which is incredible. It says this man, Ozymandias, though he was the greatest, that his kingdom would last forever and so would he reign. Alas, it was not him that lasted, but the art of the craftsman who made the statue, the craftsman, outlives the king.
[๐ฒ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐] And the words on the pedestal, supposedly elevated to show off greatness: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
This man was powerful, and he wanted people, influential people to know that in fact, he was the most powerful of them all.
And then the best line:
“Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
but, as the way the world works, all is gone, nothing remains of this mans “great” legacy. The ocean of time, the sands of time, conquers all. Nothing is meaning, and meaning is nothing, in this world. Pretty bleak.
Unless.
Unless.
“Wal ‘asr
Innal insaana lafee khusr
Illal lazeena aamanoo wa ‘amilus saalihaati wa tawaasaw bilhaqq; wa tawaasaw bissabr”
Unless you build, not for this world, but for the next, where meaning actually lasts.
By time,
Indeed, mankind is in loss,
Except for those who have believed and done righteous deeds and advised each other to truth and advised each other to patience.
(Excerpt from How To read a Book by Hamza Yusuf, Zaytuna College.)
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