Rookwood Remedy
“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. Is it enough to know a green space is there waiting full of potential? Or are we alright with a green screen backdrop of a landscape we have a vague idea of? Ozymandias is Shelley’s meditation on the vanity of human civilisations and the Phyrric victories over nature. A funny thing about the rising universe, Horsham’s tribute in fountain form, to their son is that it has survived somewhere in a private garden. The peculiar thing about a Percy Bysshe Shelly poem is that it can never be destroyed by humanity’s drive for progress. Unlike his poetry the landscape that inspired it can so easily be destroyed for all enternity with no potential for restoration via creative proliferation ...