Romantic Wheeling Project: Ozymandias Rebuttal

The Romantic Wheeling Project is a multi-genre place-based learning project where 12th grade Honors English students at Wheeling Park High School used themes of British Romanticism like Natural over Artificial, Emotion over Reason, and the Quest for Forbidden Knowledge to explore their emotional connection with The Friendly City that raised them. Students were to choose one landmark, neighborhood, or place in Wheeling to inspire their open form creative writing. The student wrote short stories, poems, songs, and played with other genres to express their connections and views of Wheeling through a Romantic lens.

I met a native from this nearby land

Who said: Rafts of steel suspended by cables

Dangle freely to the water, nearby

Sits pieces of twisted metal and broken dreams.

The grim scene, displaced cables with shattered

Beams lie buried in the water.

What still survives, written on these broken things

Reads the stamp that shows the dream:

“Wheeling Suspension Bridge, the first

And largest of its kind. Here to stay

For the rest of time”

Though it lays, broken and affray

She will return without delay

For she is a marvel, of public display

No matter the cost, she will return

For she is the dream of the natives.