Poetry and Such

What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds. Will Rogers

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We English majors are supposed to know and appreciate poetry (I think). There are a few of the classic poems that really do speak to the innards, especially this sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley -

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 those 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 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.

The gist of the poem is that no matter how mighty and great Ozymandias may have been, his statue lies half buried in the sands that “stretch far away.” Said to have been the Pharaoh Rameses in Egypt the statue does exist on display in the British Museum. I suppose the metaphor at work here is that the sands of time change everything. He says, “Look on my Works, ye Mighty and despair!” What is there to look at except for the crumbling statue and the desert. How many dynasties, dictators, and empires have come and gone in this old world, and which ones will be next...?

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School's about to start and there is a movement by some parents to get the state legislature to pass a law to wait until after Labor Day. I talked to someone yesterday at the fitness center who is ready to begin now. He is a retired teacher and coach who now volunteers in the athletic departments of the local high schools. He likes being around and of service.

School for us old-timers will start soon, too. I'm talking about the Osher Institute and its offerings. I've signed up for a class about history of the Missouri River where one of the sessions will be aboard a riverboat to take an informative cruise. Another will deal with history of Fort Abraham Lincoln, and still another with cavalry horses. In addition we always sign up for free monthly movies which have all been good. Last Friday we saw “Quartet,” a story set in a retirement home for musicians. It was fun watching the old fogeys interact with each other. Lots of laughs and a good moral, too.

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Sven and Ole worked in a factory and were talking:

Ole: “I can make the boss giff me the day off.”
Sven: “And how vould you do dat?”
Ole: “Yust vait and see.” He then hangs upside-down from the ceiling.
Boss comes in: What are you doing​?”

Ole: “I’m a light bulb.”
Boss: “Have you gone crazy. I think you need to take the day off.”

Sven starts to follow him and the boss says: “Where are you going?”
Sven says: “I’s going home, too. I can’t verk in the dark.”