Ozymandias

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

* * *

Sweet star, which gleaming o'er the darksome scene

Through fleecy clouds of silvery radiance fliest,

Spanglet of light on evening's shadowy veil,

Which shrouds the day-beam from the waveless lake,

Lighting the hour of sacred love; more sweet 

Than the expiring morn-star’s paly fires:--

Sweet star! When wearied Nature sinks to sleep,

And all is hushed,--all, save the voice of Love,

Whose broken murmurings swell the balmy blast

Of soft Favonius, which at intervals 

Sighs in the ear of stillness, art thou aught but

Lulling the slaves of interest to repose

With that mild, pitying gaze? Oh, I would look

In thy dear beam till every bond of sense

Became enamoured-- 

* * *

Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow

Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee;

For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below

The rotting bones of dead antiquity. 

* * *

I am as a spirit who has dwelt

Within his heart of hearts, and I have felt

His feelings, and have thought his thoughts, and known

The inmost converse of his soul, the tone

Unheard but in the silence of his blood, 

When all the pulses in their multitude

Image the trembling calm of summer seas.

I have unlocked the golden melodies

Of his deep soul, as with a master-key,

And loosened them and bathed myself therein--

Even as an eagle in a thunder-mist

Clothing his wings with lightning. 

* * *

I am drunk with the honey wine

Of the moon-unfolded eglantine,

Which fairies catch in hyacinth bowls.

The bats, the dormice, and the moles

Sleep in the walls or under the sward 

Of the desolate castle yard;

And when ’tis spilt on the summer earth

Or its fumes arise among the dew,

Their jocund dreams are full of mirth,

They gibber their joy in sleep; for few 

Of the fairies bear those bowls so new! 

* * *

Month after month the gathered rains descend

Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells,

And from the desert’s ice-girt pinnacles

Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend

On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend.

Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells

By Nile’s aereal urn, with rapid spells

Urging those waters to their mighty end.

O’er Egypt’s land of Memory floods are level

And they are thine, O Nile--and well thou knowest

That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil

And fruits and poisons spring where’er thou flowest.

Beware, O Man--for knowledge must to thee,

Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be. 

* * *

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.'