WHAT, IF YOU ARE GREAT?
What, if you are great and you are
looked upon by lots of people as : mighty, powerful, invincible, unparallel,
god-like, authoritative, terrible in the
use of your powers, resources, arms, and all that?
You may be a great king, emperor, ruler, governor, leader, conqueror,
etc.
You may be having many followers, helpers, subordinates, hirelings,
slaves, servants, coordinators, partners, etc.
Your
material resources may be unlimited. Your arms and weapons may be
deadliest. Your fighters and soldiers
may be uncountable.
In spite of every asset
mentioned above you are not immortal. You will die one day. Your empire will
come to an end. Your friends and followers and the people at large who were
just like your slaves will forget you.
Here is a sonnet titled
Ozymandias written by the famous English poet Percy Bysshe Shelly (1792-1822). Its
moral is that all human power, greatness, and pride are transitory,
“No matter how mighty a
ruler is or how vast their empire becomes ,time and nature will inevitably
destroy their legacy and reduce it to dust.”
The full text of the sonnet follows:
OZYMANDIAS
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.
G. R. Kanwal
10 th September 2026
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