Ozymandias: Biblically Considered

One of my favourite secular poems is Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias."  I post it here in its entirety for your meditation, with a few comments afterward.

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 shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd 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.

Weighty material, isn't it?  Perhaps the most powerful element of the poem is the irony of the words on the pedestal.  Ozymandias' boast actually becomes a dreadful warning to any "mighty" who might aspire to his greatness that they could end up like him: with no legacy but the hurt he brought to others, as preserved in the sculpture's visage.  I think that the same might be said of other "great ones" through the ages too, amen?

Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.  Prov. 16:18