The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve. - Sylvia Plath

Ozymandias

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

1. I met a traveller from an antique land
 2. Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
 3. Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
 4. Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
 5. And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
 6. Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
 7. Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
 8. The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
 9. And on the pedestal these words appear:
 10. "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
 11. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
 12. Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
 13. Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
 14. The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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Click on a line to see some annotations. 1. Antiques you say? 2. Trunkless legs? Enigmatic to me. 3. Stupid place to build a goliath statue. 4. Half sunk is how I imagine the face looks even though it's related to the legs! 5. Sic semper tyrannis! 6. "Sculptor" - The Egyptians were amazing sculptors. Their work was incredible. 7. "Lifeless things" - The sight of these ruins is reminiscent of the sights I saw in Turkey last summer. 8. This line has such as resonance of sadness. 9. In the modern age, that pedestal would be long since be the victim of graffiti. 10. Ozymandias here. Get in line Jesus. 11. Any works that are designed to make others despair are obviously abominations that never should have been dreamed up. 12. Time errodes all...except love. Love is eternal. 13. So just how big do you presume this statue was? 14. And the only sound is the whisper of the wind...