"Oxymandias" - Ashley Gabaldon

For my blog assignment I read "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. This work is a short poem about a statue in the desert. It is a sonnet and consists of fourteen lines. The poem begins by explaining that there is statue in the desert that a traveler has seen. The traveler tells the speaker that all that still stands of the once great statue are the two enormous legs. Part of the head lies nearby in the sand, but there is nothing else around it. The traveler goes on to say that there is an inscription on the statue that reads, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.” It seems that he is just describing what he has seen, but he is actually making a comment about not only the ancient world of the king, but also the world in the present day.

The statue is a depiction of the pharaoh Ozymandias, better known as Ramses II. He is the pharaoh mentioned in the Bible book of Exodus, and was an extremely powerful and highly praised monarch to Egypt. He clearly had this statue made to immortalize himself and glorify his power. The magnificence is dimmed for the reader, however, knowing that the statue is now in ruins in an empty desert. One of the last lines of the poem states, “Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair!”  This is incredibly ironic considering that there is now nothing left of his great works in the desert to “look on.”

The poem can then act as a reflection of how fleeting life and material things are. If even a great pharaoh such as Ozymandias was victim to time, then we all too must be. He was a powerful monarch and even his extraordinary statue could not withstand the powers of time. This poem can be read as a warning against arrogance and the illusion of invincibility. It is easy to imagine that Ozymandias believed that he would never die, and certainly would never fall from his status as pharaoh. Only looking back are we able to see the whole story and knowing that, we should attempt to guard ourselves against our own pride.

Memento Mori - Carrie Reed

Sometimes it takes a funeral for us to realize how short life truly is. As I read the poem, “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime,” I was reminded again of life’s frailty. The speaker begins her mournful address in remembrance of her lost loved one. “Sorrow is my own yard/ where the new grass/ flames as it has flamed/ often before but not with the cold fire/ that closes round me this year. Thirtyfive years/ I lived with my husband (Williams 61). The year after the loss of her husband of thirty-five years of marriage, spring has arrived with its fresh new life of green grass, but it just seems to lack the luster that it once held to her.
 
She takes in the beauty of the surrounding nature. “The plumtree is white today/ with masses of flowers./ Masses of flowers load the cherry branches / and color some bushes/ yellow and some red / but the grief in my heart is stronger than they / for though they were my joy / formerly, today I notice them / and turn away forgetting” (Williams 61). The plumtree and cherry tree are probably beautiful reminders of picnics had on lovely summer eves and painful reminders of what once might’ve been. The “white” flowers shown to us may symbolize the love she had for her husband just as the “yellow” and “red” ones may represent his sickness and his death.  The flowers in themselves seem to remind me of an art class I once took. A beautiful painting of a bouquet of flowers is simply a delicate way of depicting death. “Memento mori,” Latin for “reminder of death,” is simply the artist’s way of saying that life is short, so live it well. Just as our artist here, William Carlos Williams, has painted us a masterpiece.

We, as the reader, are then presented with the existence of the speaker’s son. “Today my son told me/ that in the meadows, / at the edge of the heavy woods / in the distance, he saw/ trees of white flowers” (Williams 61-62). Perhaps her son is foreshadowing his own mother’s death, as the “trees of white flowers,” her husband, beckon her from the forest. “ I feel that I would like / to go there / and fall into these flowers / and sink into the marsh near them” (Williams 62). Now we see that she does indeed wish to die amidst the beautiful white flowers.

William Carlos Williams has shown us a true love story. A widow’s eye has glazed over with remorse and no longer is affected by this world and all its gleam. She misses her husband so much that she has lost the will to live. As we see her mind’s desires unfold, we see her husband take the form of white flowers – his memory, his arms, his love. And I suppose we will see death again, as her son lays down her memento mori.

Williams, William. “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime.”101 Great American Poems. The American  Poetry and Literacy Project. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.1998. 61. Print.