Lessons From A Gigantic Leg

If you’ve bought or borrowed a copy of my latest book, A Hundred Thousand Dragons, then, apart from earning my grateful thanks, you’ll know that printed in the front is the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley.  Now, without giving too much away, the poem is there for a purpose.  I mean, it comes into the story. It’s far too much sweat for the Avid Reader to go chasing off after random pieces of poetry when reading a detective story, so I thought I’d print it in the front so, if moved to do so, the A.R. can simply flick to the front of the book.  It’s not just lugged in to give Dragons a bit of class, although I’ll have any bits of free class that are going! Just making life easier, don’t you know.  Always willing to please. All part of the service.



Ozymandias has always been a real favourite of mine.  It’s all mysterious and ancient and Egyptian in a sphinxandpyramidsandmummies sort of way, the spiritual precursor of all those hoaky old films where, having not troubled the general populace for millennia, the first thing any self-respecting mummy does on being dug up is wander around, inflicting grief on all in its path.  I can imagine the Poet Shelley punching the air, fighting off Coleridge, tripping up his mate Bryon and yelling, “Dibs on the old statue!” as he raced for his pen and muse.  Incidentally, The Poet Shelley is a phrase that cracks me up.  Jeeves often refers to The Poet Shelley as he attempts to broaden Bertie Wooster’s education.  On one occasion, Bertie, when closeted with the appallingly soppy Madeline Basset, says to her (he’s got the phrase from Jeeves) that his pal, Gussie, is “A sensitive plant”.  Madeline blinks at him and says, “You know your Shelley, Bertie.”  To which Bertie replies, “Oh? Am I?”

Anyway, back to Ozymandias.  You’d think, wouldn’t you, that with a theme as strong as that, you couldn’t go wrong.  The Poet Shelley certainly doesn’t.  Here’s his first few lines:

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

Magic!  But…  my pal Jane Finnis told me there was another poem called Ozymandias. This one’s by a bloke called Horace Smith. Smith was a friend of Shelley’s who had written his poem in competition with Shelley. It was published in the same magazine as Percy’s a month later.  And you can’t help thinking he was ill-advised. The title makes you think a bit, for a start: On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below.

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg

I don’t know why, but legs are funny.  A Farewell to Arms?  Yup.  A Farewell to Legs?  I don’t think so.  Particularly as this particular Leg seems to double as a sun-dial:  the Leg (Horace is responsible for the capitals, not me)

which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:

And so the next line, the punch-line, lacks a bit:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

To be fair to Horace, the second bit, where he looks forward to a science-fictiony post-apocalyptic London is all right:
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place

However, that’s rather taken us away from his Leg.  It’s a shame, but it’s true.  It’s not enough to have a brilliant story.  You’ve got to tell it right, too.