The Tale of If...

If...

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream and not make dreams your master;
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

~Rudyard Kipling~

The Tale of Ozymandias

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 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 work, 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~

A poem so delightful to anyone who learns to recognize the essence, the core and the truth in life. Vanity rules on man's earthly work, thus leaving a hollow gap for any spiritual exploration...Darkness blinds mortal modern lives, and escapism becomes more dreanced in the spase of memory...

Shelly well establishes transcendental themes within his poem on how Man will always boast on his achievements, the lout, the land, the gold, the power! However mighty the human ambition may be though, every one can see that in the end all will lead to despair,to the absolute nothingness of the soul instead. For earthly accomplishments, relinquish the body of now, and not the soul of the Future.

"I am Ozymandias; Kings of Kings!", so he exclmais...with such proud gleam in his face that even the richest of men will be envious. But is that all? Ozymandias is just a flesh, that will soon come to pass and that will soon be long forgotten on this earthly land. Therefore what is the point of all this greed?

Ambition drives the people who have darkness inside of them....Hope drives the ones with light in their soul...Therefore Ozymandias should be nurtured in our Souls as the ultimate task of Man to strive for the unexplicable, the illogical, the divine and the holy.

For "nothing beside remains"....

Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here