Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias has long been my favorite poem.

                 Ozymandias

I met a traveler 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 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.’

Upon reading my “Second City Fascism” blog a perceptive LRC reader sent me the following:

I know that tragically he shares your last name, but no mention of Chicago monuments would be complete without the hilarious Roland Burris grave monument. . . See here, here, and here.

Gives a whole new perspective to The Song of Roland.

The Best of Charles Burris