I spend a lot of time bemoaning the fact that I'm not doing what I should be doing; cursing the mistakes I've made, my bone idleness ... and then wondering what it actually is that I should have been doing in the first place. Daft, huh?

Anyway, when I get in one of those frames of mind I read this poem: which knocks sense back into my thick skull. After all: we only have the one shot. We might as well enjoy it, no matter what. ;)

Ozymandias

by Percy Byshe Shelley (1792-1822)

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 shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock'd 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.

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