Source

Colossi of Ramesses II at Memphis

How these master carvers achieved perfect surfaces on this scale with simple tools was beyond my comprehension. My own twenty years’ experience provided no clue. But clearly this was not the work of slaves. This forty-foot length of stone could only have been brought to life through the sensitive hand and watchful eye of a master sculptor, and with a great deal of loving care.

Stuart M. Edelson

More about the Colossus of Ramesses II

Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley

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 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 besides remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

More about Ramesses II

Colossal bust of Ramesses II, the ‘Younger Memnon’
From the Ramesseum, Thebes
Egypt 19th Dynasty, about 1250 BC

On the loan exhibit of his paintings at the Tate Gallery.
by Ezra Pound

You also, our first great,
Had tried all ways;
Tested and pried and worked in many fashions,
And this much gives me heart to play the game.




Here is a part that’s slight, and part gone wrong,
And much of little moment, and some few
Perfect as Dürer!




“In the Studio” and these two portraits,* if I had my choice I
And then these sketches in the mood of Greece?








WHISTLER, James McNeill
Brown and Gold
c.1895-1900
oil on canvas
95.8 x 51.5
© The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery,
University of Glasgow 2009


You had your searches, your uncertainties,
And this is good to know—for us, I mean,
Who bear the brunt of our America
And try to wrench her impulse into art.




You were not always sure, not always set
To hiding night or tuning “symphonies”;
Had not one style from birth, but tried and pried
And stretched and tampered with the media.




You and Abe Lincoln from that mass of dolts
Show us there’s chance at least of winning through.

* “Brown and Gold—de Race.”
“Grenat et Or—Le Pettt Cardinal.”

Source: Poetry (October 1912).

Selected Correspondence

of James McNeill Whistler






Audio Recordings

of Ezra Pound

Once, I heard You
Insisting with the Moon to bring the light;
Once I heard You
With that light, a voice so clearly true
All Stars then stopped their turns at just how bright
The World beneath was made to seem that night.



(c) Intrepid Dreamer Poetry

Landscape with Stars

Henri-Edmond Cross
(Henri-Edmond Delacroix 1856–1910)