I have a lot of favorite poems. This one always gives me hope

I was first exposed to it in high school English.
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 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.

I was reading today about how the manner in which the current president constructs his edicts lends them to being 'disappeared' in a rapid fashion even before he is dethroned.   Executive orders do not hang around the same as legislation tempered in the Capital.   Some of what he is doing will remain but like Ozimandias it will dwindle over time until it will be hard to remember what was such a big deal.

The current movement by our allies to gird their own loins and harden their own alliances is sad to see in some ways, that they do not trust us (nor should they) will I hope swing back when sanity returns.  It is my suspicion that I will not live to see the majority of the return of the U.S. being any kind of hopeful beacon to the world.  But I don't see another country filling the roll so we will be around later if not sooner.

And I won't be around to see the dessication and decay of Ozimandias but will, I hope, soon enough dance on the toppled visage.