Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Ozymandias

 
 
 

I met a traveller from an antique land,

 

Who said — “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

 

Stand in the desart....Near them, on the sand,

 

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

 5

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:

 10

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.”

 
 

To be found frequently anthologized on and off line.

Remarks:

Written by Shelley reportedly in ten minutes, as a winning entry in a sonnet-writing contest, this masterpiece may only now be edited, prepared for publication and produced in nearly as little time as it took to write it.

The artistry remains Shelley's, however, as this example reaches beyond both Petrarchan and Elizabethan conventions in an innovative movement of rhymes across quatrains that is nevertheless true to a modified Petrarchan form.