The Held Corpus · Reader Edition

Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley · 1818 · poem
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818). The second planned reading on the synopsis sheet (“Ozymandias (p. 214)”), from an unnamed anthology. Each paragraph carries a stable anchor (¶) so that the project's analysis can cite and link into this text; a linked paragraph is highlighted.

¶1Ozymandias By Percy Bysshe Shelley

¶2I 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.