.
Ozymandias
after Percy Bysshe Shelley
More solitary than an orphan’s reach
That vigil, that the shifting peaks repel,
A site of none left even to beseech—
Less ruthless now, where only fragments dwell
Nor murmur but the wind’s “iconoclast”…
IMPERIUM itself before it fell.
A calm within his silence as it passed
As in most loss, some reverie as well…
Long desiccated by the sandy seep
Within that shimmer, somehow left outside
Each lesser century that fills the deep
Oasis there, the one of human pride…
Perhaps to slake some greater thirst of man;
As such, ignored by local caravan.
He looked away, as at the sudden blast
Of windswept sand, as though more left to tell.
.
.
A Philadelphia native, Dave Blanchard has had poetry published in The Sandpaper, Wings of Freedom (the magazine of the Delaware Valley Historical Aircraft Association) and The Schuylkill Valley Journal. He has also authored poems published in the programs of the Volvo Leukemia Cup Regatta. He is a Haverford College graduate and a resident of Drexel Hill, PA.
An enjoyable read, Dave.
Thanks very much, Drilon! I’d recommend Paul Johnson’s brief bio on Napoleon, ending with this: ‘We have to learn again the central lesson of history: that all forms of greatness, military and administrative, nation and empire building, are as nothing–indeed are perilous in the extreme–without a humble and contrite heart.’
Haunting and enigmatic.