Ozymandias

I met a traveler 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 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 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. Percy Bysshe Shelley / Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; With Other Poems / London: Hollinger. p. 72 (1876) This poem is in the public domain.