Look on my words, ye Mighty and despair
One of my favourite poems is the karmic irony of a faded and forgotten king:
Ozymandias
I met a traveler 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, whos 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 words, 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.—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
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