Will Anything Last Forever?

In recent weeks workers have been making repairs to our magnificent State House and re-grouting the massive blocks of native granite that form its steps and walls. Our first State House in Columbia, a mere shadow of today’s structure, was originally completed in 1794. The building has been repaired, restored, and enlarged many times, but from its earliest days it has been a monument to our rich and storied heritage and our noblest ideals of freedom and self-government. It is a place where the people rule under the Constitution and the laws they themselves have made. As I observed the workers preserving our state’s most historic building, I was reminded of the poet Shelley’s great sonnet, Ozymandias (see box above).

Shelley tells the story of a once great monument built by the Egyptian pharaoh, Ramses II, to proclaim his power and his belief that the civilization he ruled would last forever. The great temple he built at the center of his realm was even inscribed with a warning to friend and foe: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

Yet this once great monument to an emperor’s power and glory, we are told, now lies “sunk,” “shattered,” and ruined in the desert sands, a “colossal wreck” whose scattered columns remind the traveler that all of man’s greatest works, man himself, and the world in which we live will eventually pass away.

Elected officials who work in grand buildings of state, with their marble pillars, grand hallways, marble floors, glittering chandeliers and fine art can come to think of these great buildings as monuments to themselves and their own vainglory. There is a temptation to believe one is entitled, and that having made it to an exclusive club, one can do as one pleases, rather than what one ought.

Many forget that they are merely the people’s servants and, like Ozymandias, come to believe that the ornate structures in which they work proclaim their own individual greatness, and that while they serve they should also be served. Yet all the ambitions, power, chairmanships, seniority and influence quickly pass away and amount to nothing if the object of one’s labors is mere personal aggrandizement or self-interest.

Our nation and the states that comprise it are unique in the world. They were founded not on the basis of ethnicity, personal ambition, feudal land holdings, or the conquest of one group over another, but rather founded on ideas and the Christian ideals of a pilgrim people. But our most cherished monuments, like those who erected them, will one day surely pass away.

It is proper that we build and maintain monuments to our greatest state and national ideals and to those who lived and died for them. But we should always realize that these majestic structures serve to remind us of who we are, what we believe, where we come from, and like lighthouses, they guide us on our way. And we should humbly acknowledge that even our most enduring structures will one day pass away, just as will the most thoughtfully constructed laws, policies, and budgets ever crafted by elected officials.

A 20th century American commentator said that "a politician's legacy will be hollow indeed, unless his motivation is for a goal and a calling greater than himself." All public servants should consider that solemn thought, look squarely in the mirror, and resolve that their every motive and goal will be to promote the overall public good.

Adorning a kitchen wall in my grandparent’s home was a short poem that I understand better now than I did as a child when I first saw it. The thought-provoking poem, speaking to the days of Ozymandias and to our own day, read:

Only one life, ‘twill soon be passed,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Remarkable! It should comfort and encourage us to realize that while granite monuments will crumble and civilizations rise and fall, people can do certain things individually that will last forever.