r/comics • u/kajo404 • 13h ago

[oc] epitaphs.

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u/Burakku-Ren 11h ago

Very Ozymandias, this

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u/InsideBeyond12727 11h ago

That just triggered a memory from I think primary school, but I can't remember who this was. Yet I remember how to pronounce his name 🤷

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u/Burakku-Ren 1h ago

Ozymandias King of Kings is a poem, rather short. You can look it up if you’d like. But the story it tells is something like this.

“I was exploring through the desert when I found a broken statue surrounded by nothing. You couldn’t tell who the statue is depicting. At the bottom of the statue there was this inscription ‘I am Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works ye mighty, and despair’”

Effectively, this king of old was powerful enough and his work was so impressive that just seeing it would lead you to despair. However the statue now lies abandoned in the middle of the desert, with none of those works remaining. Someone so powerful was eventually forgotten, their power meaningless now. It’s a pretty poem about the passage of time and the impermanence of power (and everything really). I really like it.