For works with similar titles, see Ozymandias.
OZYMANDIAS of EGYPT
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 shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd 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.
Authoritative external sources
- c1817 draft manuscript
- 1819 version appearing in "Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue": adds caps to "Mighty"; uses "desart" for "desert"; uses -ed for -'d
- 1875 Golden Treasury version @ Bartleby: original spelling (identical to above wikisource)
- 1914 Harvard Classics version @ Bartleby: adds cap to "Mighty", changes some commas.
- 1914 Oxford version @ Gutenberg: "modernized" as explained in preface (-'d replaced with -ed), adds cap to "Mighty", "modernized" punctuation.
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