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Shelley: Ozymandias
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Have we included probably the best megalithic related poem ever written, or ever likely to be, Shelly's Ozymandias?

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.

But also, there's possibly the worst megalithic related poem ever written – penned at the same time at the same place!
Apparently, Shelly had a friend called Horace Smith and they had a sonnet-writing session together in 1817 when they decided to each write a sonnet on the same subject. Shelly came up with Ozymandias, whereas Horace…didn't.

(Even the title is so bad it deserves immortality)

"On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below"

by Horace Smith

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows.
"I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone,
"The King of kings: this mighty city shows
The wonders of my hand." The city's gone!
Naught but the leg remaining to disclose
The sight of that forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What wonderful, but unrecorded, race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.


"I've finished mine Percy. What do you think of it?"
"Very nice Horace"
"Have you done one yet Perc?"
"Well, yes, there's this modest little effort...."


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nigelswift
Posted by nigelswift
31st August 2005ce
07:43

In reply to:

Megalithic Poems (Littlestone)

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Re: Megalithic Poems (Wiggy)
Re: Megalithic Poems (Littlestone)

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