Poetry Friday: Ozymandias

Poetry Friday is an idea started recently by Kelly at Big A little a. Entries have also been published by Camille at A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy and Louise at Students for Literacy Ottawa. Here is one of my favorites, which I remember studying in Mr. Mechem's English class (the class from which I remember the most, out of all that I learned in high school).

Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley

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 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 mockt 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."

I found it in the book Poetry Out Loud, edited by Robert Alden Rubin, with an introduction by James Earl Jones. My favorite part is this:

'Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.

It's so powerful. This great, sneering, commander making his mark on the world, and now, nothing remains except the 'lone and level sands stretch far away.'