Watching TV this week and looking at the facade of Lehman Brothers in New York–that fancy, awe-inspiring electronic screen which would at times show a huge American flag waving–my mind wandered back to high school and Percy Bysse Shelley’s sonnet Ozimadias:
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.
The hubris of it all! These huge companies–this government–none remember that we are all but human beings. I look at the Lehman Brothers sign and think “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” And what will be left of it next week?
