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.”
Shelley’s Poetry and Prose (1977)
