Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Ozymandias vs Ozymandias

?

Did you catch the title of Sunday's (9/15/13) Breaking Bad episode? I didn't either, but Pearcey did, Ozymandias. Ozy-man-di-as.


So lets refresh: What is this title? Who is this king?

The LaChaBenn dictionary defines Ozymandias as the following:

Ozymandias
 noun

1.  The title of season five, episode 14 of Breaking Bad.  Rated 10 out of 10 by 22,477 IMBD users;

2. A known poem written in 1818 by Percy Bysshe Shelly;

3. A lesser known poem written in 1818 by Horse Smith in competition to Shelly's poem. 




Shelly's 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





vs

Smith's Ozymandias

IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
      Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
      The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
    "I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
      "The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
    "The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
      Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
    The site of this forgotten Babylon.

    We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
    Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
      Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
    He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
      What powerful but unrecorded race
      Once dwelt in that annihilated place.






Which poem you like the most is up to you. ...and for the first time since 1818 people want to know what will come of the King of Kings.








 

Can't wait!

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