“Poetic Wednesday”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was a major English Romantic poet. (His wife, Mary Shelley, was the author of Frankenstein.) “Ozymandias” is about hubris/arrogance.
Ozymandias
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 those 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 (1818)
C.S. Lewis on Pride, the Greatest Sin
- “Pride is the essential vice, the utmost evil.”
- “It was through pride that the Devil became the Devil.“
- “Pride leads to every other vice.”
- “Pride is the complete anti-God state of mind.”
- A proud person has to be “better” than everyone else.
- A proud person is never satisfied.
- A proud person craves power.
- Pride is a supposed independence from God.
- Pride makes you an enemy of God.
- Pride makes you vulnerable to the Devil.
- You can be blind to your own pride.
“Pride goeth before the fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)
Artists Renderings of “Ozymandias”
The London Edition 