Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley| Original | La versione del poeta Horace Smith. |
| OZYMANDIAS I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast 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: "I am Ozimandias, King of Kings. Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair." Nothing besides remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away. | OZYMANDIAS 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,— Nought 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. |
