I'm  Ozymandias! The King of Kings. Look upon my works, ye  mighty  and despair...."
—Percy B. Shelley

The World has changed, gone are the huts, castles, stone walls and towers. No more do armies clad in armour match unto to battle with swords, spears and bows at the order of kings. Even the age of kings is perhaps, almost at an end. They still exist here and there, but never again shall they reach the peak of their powers over men, when they walked the Earth as near gods, a long time ago.

So much has changed, so much has gone, much more has been forgotten, but only I remember.  I must, for I was there at the dawn of the era of men, I shall be at its dusk. It's my eternal task to remember.

Now, the sons of men have reshaped the World. These creatures never cease to amuse and amaze me. They aren't nature's strongest spawn nor the most blessed with longevity.
Yet, these persistent species have tamed this planet. Their roads of bitumen spreading across the Planet's face, to accommodate the horseless chariots men call cars. In their birth, valleys were levelled and rocks blown away. Everything was smoothened. The World was remade to suit man, it's still being remade.

Now, devices undreamed by their ancestors are upon  the Earth in millions. There is electricity. Man has tamed the power of lightning into his abode.

Skyscrapers, towers of glass and steel higher than the stone towers of their ancestors, now pierce the sky. Man's dream at Babel is hardly over.

Man has not only tamed the Earth, he has taken to the skies. For centuries, none thought man could fly like the birds. The Greeks told the story of Icarus and Daedalus his father, who hid the secret of flight from all men, after Icarus his son died in flight.

Well, now men have discovered the secret of flight. The Wright brothers are said to have been the first to perfect this dream of inventors and men throughout the ages. Now men fly across the World and beyond. Man has already began to lay claim to the World beyond ours—Space.

There is no limit to travel. Transportation has changed, no more chariots, carriages, donkeys and horses as means from country to country.  Cars, ships and planes have been invented.

What of the military? That too has changed, now there are guns, deadly weapons, their bullets swifter than arrows. Oh yes, now there are bombs; weapons able to summon hell on Earth. Not so long ago I saw the use of these "monsters" in the last World War.

Yes, there are still wars. Perhaps not everything has changed. Age after age, men have showed this trait. There were always wars. Kings against Kings, nations against nations. There have been so many wars. I could tell you why and how each and everyone of them were fought.

Although, the weapons have changed, the aftermath remains the same, era after era: a battlefield strewn with bodies. Blood of foe and friend mingle together, absolved by the thirsty Earth, the towns burn, the women weep and the children starve.

So much of it I have seen, so much I have stressed the lessons to following generations only to be ignored and I once again pay host to an all too familiar scene.

Why do the nations war amongst themselves? I have seen men move east to  west, slaughtering their brethren in their wake, only for the same movement to be repeated in reverse: a new movement from west to east, slaughtering and pillaging.

Winners and losers, I have seen them all. Each playing his role in the cause of the passing of men. I have seen villains called heroes and heroes cursed as villains by those they have defended. I know the names of kings of countless dynasties: those lost, those remembered, those hated and those loved.

I have seen the passing of the old gods, now proven as false and of course the new One. It's sort of amusing to watch nations rise and fall, empires expand and contract. But then there rises a pattern through the ages. A continuous repetition, never disappearing from stone to INTERNET.

It's the way of man. In whatever age, there are cruel men, kind ones and those who fall into the varieties in between. Men at times attain high and pure virtues and are revered as saints, illuminating lives to come. Some too attain the highest of vices, becoming more beast than men, causing their names to be remembered through time as those who gave life to monstrosities.

This again have I observed of these mortals: from Rameses II, the great pharaoh who inscribed his name in many a temple, to immortalize his name, to the more recent feet of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. Thus, leaving "eternal" footprints on the Moon. Humans want to be remembered beyond their comparably short lives. There is this hunger for greatness and glory that spurs them into action. It's a desire to live beyond their lives in the hearts of men—a seemingly immortality. This desire had given birth to heroes as well as villains.

The quest for glory: Romans excelled at that, their empire expanded to the ends of the Earth. Their emperors were desirous to out do their predecessors in valor and glory. There was Octavian, later raised to Augustus. He had the honour of being first emperor. For Nero, who followed emperors later, he arguably out did many in cruelty. Trajan? His quest for glory led him all the way to Assyria and beyond the borders of the Roman empire to the Persian Gulf.

There are so many names born of this quest: Shaka Zulu, Asika, Qin Shih Huang ti, William the Conqueror, the Umayyads,  Caesre Borgia. It was all for the glory. I saw it all. I see it now, they come and go in an endless fashion.

The World has changed, but then that's only what is permanent in this World. Constant change in form, but hardly in nature. Man will always be man, virtuous as he is villainous. Different actors, yet the same roles are played, over and over again.

I have seen men reckoned with, throughout time. I was there when the Greek king Alexander, now called great cut the Gordian knot in firm determination to rule Asia. When Caesar breathe his last muttering, "Et tu Brute?" to the treachery of his friend Brutus, I heard it all.

When Rome fell and the World gasped at the overwhelming change that was to come, I was there. I saw Napoleon's conquests and his defeat at Waterloo. Hitler's brutality that earned him a place beside Nero in unmatched cruelty, sickened me.

With men such as these, I have noticed an underlying singularity. One peculiar to those at the highest point of the eras of men. A sort of delusional invincibility, almost considering themselves gods. As divinity amongst humanity, an exaggeration of their powers, to think that they made things as they were. That they were the movers of nations.

Perhaps, it seemed so, but now they're gone. Who now moves the nations? These men now as they were then, are a force of nature, to play their parts and pass on, as all men must.

Each age considered itself civilized. Yet, it's only with its passing that its flaws are fully seen.

The Aztecs and Mayans of New World considered themselves at the height of their civilization, to be the best of humanity. But even they are today considered in a bad light for their gory human sacrifices.

The Romans glorified in their conquests and their refined habits above barbarians. But even these celebrated people sat in amphitheatres and made merry over the slaughtering of their fellow men.

The Egyptians too, the master builders of the old World, who at the dawn of their civilization, killed slaves, so as to be buried their masters, to serve them in the afterlife, once upon a very distant time.

For the Renaissance it was slavery, one of man's greatest sins against another

Nowadays, they're dismissed as acts of ignorance and darkness. So they were, but humanity isn't over them yet.

When this era is past, they shall be revealed. I have a feeling that pollution shall be one of them. Man in his quest to subdue the Earth to his service has hurt the green deeply, but then it was never my job to say what will happen but what has happened.

Dear sun, I see you shining up there. You and I have watched this world for centuries and will continue to do so, for more centuries to come.

Right now, a plague has befallen mankind. A sickness that their modern drugs are yet to cure. Death has declared its constant presence among them in an uproar. But they will survive, they always do. They survived the Black Death and the Spanish flu, they will also survive this, but at what cost?

Time is passing, as it has always done. Where it's racing to? I don't know. I know, however that I must journey with men as I have done over the ages, till the end, whenever that may be.

Kings, queens, heroes, legends, villains, paupers, conquerors, whores, traitors and the rest; I suppose I will see more of them. Although it will be in different forms, yet substantially the same.

Yet, man might still surprise, who knows? I'm no god nor am I omniscience like the Great HE.

In some places, I have been wholly forgotten, or vaguely seen through the midst of the ages. Much have I known, much more will I still know. When the ages are gone and the men of today areno more, I shall be there, reflecting the past like a mirror in time.

I'm he who saw the past for the present, to guide it to the future. I'm what today shall be tomorrow.  The one who lingers in the sands of time, over broken pedestals, lost crowns and temples.
I'm the past. I'm History.

A writer without readers is never satisfied, thanks for the audience