Ozymandias

[Ocelot II]

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!"
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
--Percy Bysshe Shelley

Just sayin'.

[LearnedHand]

1. Fitting

In exactly the same way it was for Walter White in the Ozymandias episode.

[dixiegrrrrl]

15. Fitting for an obituary, methinks, n/t

[CommonHumanity]

2. WORD! - NT

[Harker]

3. I think (less poetically) along these lines every time I send a package.

Yes, everything is perishable.

[Upthevibe]

4. Ocelot II............

Thanks for posting. Quite intense.

As someone else posted, what's widely considered the best episode of Breaking Bad is titled, Ozymandias.

[Warpy]

5. One of my favorites

and I think of it often these days. Even these tyrants will become worm food, their monuments to themselves will crumble, their empires will split apart, and even the gods they used to keep the rest of us in line eventually fade away.

[Timeflyer]

6. Perfect.

[Martin Eden]

7. All Things Must Pass

Including the Orange kidney stone
Painful though it may be

[summer_in_TX]

11. Or as the cartoon I saw here calls him, the Hate Pumpkin.

[Martin Eden]

13. Linus did not summon him

But some dark force did; perhaps Stephen Miller.

[GoCubsGo]

8. This one has been in my head for weeks.

Especially after I saw the rubble that was once the East Wing of the White House.

[Aviation Pro]

9. As read by the great Bryan Cranston

[summer_in_TX]

12. Ooh, thanks for sharing that!

Long ago when I was in high school UIL, that was the poem I read for the competition in poetry reading. The shy nerdy schoolgirl I was then didn't deliver it with a fraction of the effect Brian Cranston does in this.

[pecosbob]

10. Some will also recall that under old Oz (Rameses II), Egypt ran right into the "old king" syndrome.

He lived to over ninety years and by the time of his death, most of his offspring were already dead. This led to a succession crisis which brought an end to the nineteenth dynasty.

[eppur_se_muova]

14. I pretty well memorized that poem back in high school. It's the only poem I've ever done that with.

By and large, poetry doesn't do much for me. But 'Ozymandius' is a true masterpiece, IMHO.