Ozymandias |
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On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below
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by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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by Horace Smith
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I met a traveller from an antique land |
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In Egypts sandy silence, all alone, |
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Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
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Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
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Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, |
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The
only shadow that the Desert knows.
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Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
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I am great Ozymandias, saith the stone,
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And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
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The
King of kings: this mighty city shows
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Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
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The wonders of my hand. The citys gone!
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Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
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Nought
but the leg remaining to disclose
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The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
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The site of that forgotten Babylon.
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And on the pedestal these words appear: |
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My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: |
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We wonder, and some hunter may express |
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Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! |
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Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
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Nothing beside remains. Round the decay |
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Where
London stood, holding the wolf in chase,
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Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
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He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
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The lone and level sands stretch far away. |
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What
wonderful, but unrecorded, race
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Once
dwelt in that annihilated place. |
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