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Ozymandias by Shelley

Matt Wheeler (one of the simple church leaders) and I had a great conversation about this poem recently and I thought it would be great to post here.  Thanks Matt for sharing this with me!  I had never read it before.

Ozymandias

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

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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3 thoughts on “Ozymandias by Shelley”

  1. I do love this poem as I like many of Shelley’s poems and other poems of the Romantics. I was just told about the concept of Simple Church so I’m looking at the website. However, you do realize that Shelley was an atheist, right? He was a very famous atheist and even wrote a very well-known poem called The Necessity of Atheism. I just thought it should be mentioned . . .

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