I recently became aware of the poem below, written by English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and could not help but think it must have been inspired to some degree by stoic philosophy. Specifically the following Marcus Aurelius quote on the emptiness of fame.
People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out.
Meditations 4.19a
I hope you find it as meaningful and enjoyable as I did.
Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley – 1792-1822
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."
This poem is in the public domain.
