The thought occurred that a blog about the Ramesseum, Shelley, his poem, and the link with Ramesses II might be interesting. I have always loved the poem, and, recently, I was lucky enough to see the actual remains of ‘that colossal wreck’ for myself when I visited the Royal Cult Temple of Ramesses II (1279-1213 B.C.), also known as the Ramesseum, in Egypt.
The lone and level sands stretch far away.” Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, Look on my words, ye mighty, and despair!’ The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, Tells that its sculptor well those passions read Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frownĪnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) by Amelia Curran, Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.
At his best, as in his sonnet Ozymandias, he is inimitable.
But he was also intelligent and highly imaginative and has been described as ‘the poet of volcanic hope for a better world’. He was thrown out of Eton for expressing atheistic views. He disapproved of matrimony – but married twice he was a vegetarian (rare at the time), a republican and a Radical. The short but tumultuous life of the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), one of the greatest of the Romantic poets of the early 19 th century, shows him to have been a man of contradictions.
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