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.
1817
setting of Percy Shelley's
poem Ozymandias. So far
only the last five lines have
music. Ozymandias was the
Greek name for Ramses II,
Pharaoh of Egypt in the 13th
century B.C. The traveller
could be Diodorus Siculus, a
1st century B.C. Greek
historian who recorded the
inscription on Ramses' hugh
statue.
©2010 David Rupp