The Other Colossal Wreck

Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.
-- Proverbs 16:18

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace
--Jimi Hendrix

Last night I heard Jimi Hendrix's "Castles Made of Sand," whose refrain basically laments the ephemerality of all lives and relationships--"And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually."

These lyrics brought to mind a poem forced upon me in grade school, Shelley's "Ozymandias." In this poem, a traveller remarks upon the last vestiges of a monument to the ancient king Ozymandias, whose project it was to build a monument to his own immortality in the desert.

Hendrix's reality clashes with the certitude of the ancient king, who arrogantly challenged, "'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:/Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'" We now know with the benefit of hindsight that Ozymandias is all too human.

"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,/The lone and level sands stretch far away."

GWB should listen.