First love

This past week, I have been thinking about what my passions are. Recently, I have been feeling empty inside. I have been missing the seething intensity that you experience when talking about or doing something that is close to your heart. 

As a student, poetry always stirred my emotions. Today I decided to go back to one of my favorite poets of all time- Percy Bysshe Shelley. I spent the past half hour reading and re-reading one of his classics- Ozymandias.   You can only do justice to reciting a poem like this when you not only understand the words but you also appreciate the delicate nuances of his play with the language. It took me five to six readings to fully grasp and interpret the poem. 

I also learnt today that Ozymandias is written about a real king- the great Pharaoh of Egypt Ramesses. Shelley wrote about the statue of the Pharaoh before it was brought to England. The story goes that Shelley and a friend had a bet about which one of them could create verse about the statue first. And thus was born one of the most beautiful sonnets of our time. 

For now, I will settle for reliving one of my childhood passions- my love of beautiful, classic, English poetry.

Ozymandias- by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a  traveler from an antique land
Who said- Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them in 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.

Dora.. Out.. Woof