Percy Bysshe Shelley

I didn't remember being impressed with Shelley's poetry until my aunt Mabel happened to mention the name Ozymandias in some conversation.  Aunt Mabel was widely read and thought of herself as an educated woman, gaining her BA after she retired.

The name Ozymandias intrigued me and, in the days before the Internet, I checked my encyclopaedia. Apparently, it is the Greek name of the Egyptian pharaoh, Ramses II.

This would have to be the most interesting sonnet I have encountered.

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.”

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