Thank you so much, I've memorized a few poems (Ozymandias being the first one) and this one will surely be added to that list. I really like this kind of theme, if you know more please share.
Once in Persia reigned a king,
Who upon his signet ring
Graved a maxim true and wise,
Which, if held before his eyes,
Gave him counsel at a glance
Fit for every change and chance.
Solemn words, and these are they;
“Even this shall pass away.”
Trains of camels through the sand
Brought him gems from Samarcand;
Fleets of galleys through the seas
Brought him pearls to match with these;
But he counted not his gain
Treasures of the mine or main;
“What is wealth?” the king would say;
“Even this shall pass away.”
‘Mid the revels of his court,
At the zenith of his sport,
When the palms of all his guests
Burned with clapping at his jests,
He, amid his figs and wine,
Cried, “O loving friends of mine;
Pleasures come, but do not stay;
‘Even this shall pass away.’”
Lady, fairest ever seen,
Was the bride he crowned the queen.
Pillowed on his marriage bed,
Softly to his soul he said:
“Though no bridegroom ever pressed
Fairer bossom to his breast,
Mortal flesh must come to clay –
Even this shall pass away.”
Fighting on a furious field,
Once a javelin pierced his shield;
Soldiers, with a loud lament,
Bore him bleeding to his tent.
Groaning from his tortured side,
“Pain is hard to bear,” he cried;
“But with patience, day by day,
Even this shall pass away.”
Towering in the public square,
Twenty cubits in the air,
Rose his statue, carved in stone.
Then the king, disguised, unknown,
Stood before his sculptured name,
Musing meekly: “What is fame?
Fame is but a slow decay;
Even this shall pass away.”
Struck with palsy, sore and old,
Waiting at the Gates of Gold,
Said he with his dying breath,
“Life is done, but what is Death?”
Then, in answer to the king,
Fell a sunbeam on his ring,
Showing by a heavenly ray,
“Even this shall pass away.”
–Theodore Tilton
_and_
The ivory gods,
And the ebony gods,
And the gods of diamond and jade,
Sit silently on their temple shelves
While the people
Are afraid.
Yet the ivory gods,
And the ebony gods,
And the gods of diamond-jade,
Are only silly puppet gods
That the people themselves
Have made.
There are a couple more poems I know and love on a similar theme, but they're probably not of interest to this audience as they're in Sanskrit :-) (“सा रम्या नगरी…” by Bhartṛhari, “ मान्धाता स महीपतिः…” by Bhoja, and “…शान्त्यै मनो दीयताम्” by Kṣemendra)
Not another poem on that theme, but something cool I remembered related to Ozymandias: Gilbert Adair, somewhere in his amazing translation (A Void) of Georges Perec's work La Disparition — written entirely without a single instance of the letter 'e' — has this rewrite of Ozymandias that maintains the lipogram constraint (and rhyme):
“stamp'd” doesn't contain an 'e', and such forms are accepted especially in verse, and this is one of the tricks that Adair uses (sparingly) in his translation. (Used less than other tricks: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1557971160)
