Shelley’s Ozymandias

Reminded by Matt Bartlett of this poem (that I’d forgotten was Shelley !) that made a big impression on me at school.

Also picked-up on this Glen Colquhoun Link.

Also via Matt, this Vision of Christian Education – Our Cultural Context (1.7 Meg PDF link)

I like the contrasting Modernist and Post-Modernist “Apostle’s Creeds” that Matt extracts.

In Summary
Belief in progress through man’s scientific rationality vs belief in more than one context dependent truth, and science is not it.

Thanks Matt.

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.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley