Ozymandias
—Percy Bysshe
Shelly, 1818
Ozymandias |
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.”
The lone and level sands stretch far away. |
The Art:
Classic! Love this.
ReplyDeleteSeconded!
ReplyDeleteAllan.
Poor Horace never gets the nod...
ReplyDeleteHorace Smith's "Ozymandias"
In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Naught but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.