Thank you Alfred Hitchcock for capturing
the heads of Mount Rushmore on film
too big to be a joke
proof that nature must be made to serve man
as near to God's image
as his giant imagination can get.
God Bless America!
and preserve those travesties
in all their rocksure
cocksure majesties.
elPintor
Sat 15th Apr 2017 00:32
I once had a daydream of Rushmore being swallowed by the earth..MC has a point, though--my dream may one day come true...
Percy Shelley's "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 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.
from, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias
The Mount Rushmore memorial bears some passing
similarity to the reasoning behind the monument told of
by the poet in a famous poem - the ego that demands
"Look on my works (O ye Mighty)...and despair" And who
knows? The great heads of those past presidents may
also be worn down to barely discernible fragments by
the remorseless ravages of time...and be the subject of
some as yet unwritten poem.
What a great story Col to go with the poem. Everything has a price, even paradise. (is that another verse I wonder?)I love that word skedaddled by the way. There's something deeply ironic about heads in the cloud !
Ah the versatility of words David. A wry comment if ever I saw one. I'm saving the audio for a Prince Charles debut , fingers crossed.
I'm glad you highlighted that line Paul - I know you like a twist lightly adjusted to suit. The film was a real classic, especially the music of Bernard Herrmann. (who wrote the Psycho music too).
Happy Easter all.
Ray, very good this, especially:
"in all their rocksure
cocksure majesties"
I must watch this film again, thanks for the reminder.
Paul
<Deleted User> (13762)
Fri 14th Apr 2017 08:17
Ha, I almost have some first hand experience of this Ray. I drove up to Mount Rushmore last year through the theme park towns of Deadwood and Sturgis only to find my goal shrouded in cloud. Off course you have to pay because it's cleverly concealed - not just by clouds - so I asked if I could turn around and leave having found myself in a queue of cars. Fortunately they said yes so I skedaddled away and went in search of something else, a campsite I believe. There followed a very long drive across South Dakota and Iowa and endless fields of corn, soya and sunflowers. God Bless America!
Col
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raypool
Sat 15th Apr 2017 10:39
Nicely observed Mark. That does give pause for thought. I feel that a similar tribute in a communist country would be mourned and vilified today, but America gets away with it and still lives on that inglorious past that set the country up.
Thanks for your points.
Thank you elP. Imagine fast forward to a future time - even rock gets weathered eventually . i'm thinking of the San Andreas fault creating a massive island promontory! and lake. A very appropriate poem too full of gothic symmetry.
Ray