My 17-year-old son's favorite TV show is "Breaking Bad." By accident, I found this Breaking Bad promo on the Internet, and I was completely mesmerized by Bryan Cranston's reading of the poem, "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Here are the words:
Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
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.
Source: Shelley's Poetry and Prose (1977)
Here is a creative exercise you can try. Continue the story of Shelley's "traveller" by describing other sights he or she might have seen in the "antique land." Here is what I came up with:
And in the distance, there stands a crown
Clinging to a fragment of bone
The mighty voice that once invoked fear
Died alone without a moan
No threads remain of the royal gown
And yet his spirit is lurking here
In the silence that feels like death
I can almost hear his ghostly breath:
"Where are my people, where is my Queen?
What is this place, what is this scene?"
His words haunt me and fill me with dread
As I walk upon the bones of the dead
The thousands of men he slayed in his life
In order to steal another king's wife.
