English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 515. Ozymandias of Egypt |
| | | Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) |
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| 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 shatter’d visage lies, whose frown | |
| And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command | 5 |
| Tell that its sculptor well those passions read | |
| Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things, | |
| The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed; | |
| And on the pedestal these words appear: | |
| ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: | 10 |
| 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. | |
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