/lit/ - Literature

>>21478613

I saw a statue in the sand
Of a king who once ruled all this land
His face was proud, his body grand
But now he's just a pile of sand

His kingdom's gone, his power too
All that's left is what we see through
The ruins of his rule, so true
The mighty Ozymandias, now who?

Time has passed, and so has he
Leaving only his legacy
But even that will one day be
Forgotten, like the man he used to be

So let us learn from Ozymandias' fate
That all our power and all our state
Will one day crumble and dissipate
Leaving only memories, before it's too late

Shelley or Smith?

Shelley has a bit more epic version whereas Smith goes post-apocalypse route.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias#Text

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias_(Smith)#Text

Shelley's poem:

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.

Smith's poem:

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 site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.