Dear Editor:

At some point during our high school years, all of us had to read and discuss “Ozymandias,” a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Its final image of ruins in a vast, empty desert is unforgettable, and we all understood the theme of earthly power passing away.

The title is a variant of the name Rameses II, pharaoh of Egypt. A warlike ruler who coerced thousands of slaves and craftsmen to build monuments to himself, he financed these works by ruthless taxation on the peasantry. As god-king, he projected his power in stone and imperishable gold, proof of his greatness for all eternity.

(For most of us, he is now just a footnote in a textbook of ancient history.)

This year, we are preparing to celebrate the 80th birthday of our own ruler. Unconstrained by any law or custom, Emperor Donald I of Queens is constructing his colossal image by tarting up the Oval Office with self-adhesive gilt; hanging a 30-foot-tall banner of his scowling, tough-guy face over the main entrance to the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building; self-branding our national Center for the Performing Arts; demolishing a wing of the People’s House for a tasteless and disproportionate ballroom; planning to surpass Caesarean and Hitlerian vanity with a triumphal arch, framing Robert E. Lee’s mansion; and stamping his image on our currency and identification documents. He has also given tacit approval for adding himself to Mt. Rushmore.

It won’t take two millennia for these products of Trump’s arrogance to crumble and fall, like the carved face of Ozymandias, with its “frown, / And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command.”

We revere your mean and intimidating mug shot, Sir. And your portrait with Jesus laying His hands upon you. Happy birthday!

Bill Hammond

Boothbay