Random Thoughts - Emptiness of Power

I have reproduced in the following one of my all-time favourite song from the modern era, "Mad about you", by Sting. The lyrics of Sting’s “Mad about you” has, in my opinion, incorporated one of the most extensive use of vivid imagery in modern music. If you should be so kind as to review the lyrics, I am very sure that you would concur with my opinion.

Mad about you (By Sting)

A stone's throw from Jerusalem
I walked a lonely mile in the moonlight
And though a million stars were shining
My heart was lost on a distant planet
That whirls around the April moon
Whirling in an arc of sadnessI
'm lost without you, I'm lost without you
Though all my kingdoms turn to sand and fall into the sea
I'm mad about you, I'm mad about you

And from the dark secluded valleys
I heard the ancient songs of sadness
But every step I thought of you
Every footstep only you
Every star a grain of sand
The leavings of a dried up ocean
Tell me, how much longer,
How much longer?

They say a city in the desert lies
The vanity of an ancient king
But the city lies in broken pieces
Where the wind howls and the vultures sing
These are the works of man
This is the sum of our ambition
It would make a prison of my life
If you became another's wife
With every prison blown to dust
My enemies walk free
I'm mad about you, I'm mad about you

And I have never in my life
Felt more alone than I do now
Although I claim dominions over all I see
It means nothing to me
There are no victories
In all our histories
Without love

A stone's throw from Jerusalem
I walked a lonely mile in the moonlight
And though a million stars were shining
My heart was lost on a distant planet
That whirls around the April moon
Whirling in an arc of sadness
I'm lost without you, I'm lost without you

And though you hold the keys to ruin of everything I see
With every prison blown to dust my enemies walk free
Though all my kingdoms turn to sand and fall into the sea
I'm mad about you, I'm mad about you

The song's central theme on the vast emptiness of power has resonated very strongly with one of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s most famous poem, Ozymandias, which I had the honour of being examined upon in my literature lessons during my secondary school days. I have reproduced the said poem below.

Ozymandias (By 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 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.

N.B. The morale of the story in this case should be everything is only transient and nothing lasts forever :)