Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley(1818)
Poemc. 1 pages
“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
One great work, every day
by Percy Bysshe Shelley(1818)
“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Percy Bysshe Shelley(1818)
Fourteen lines about a ruined statue in the desert, and the inscription that survives: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair. Shelley wrote this in a sonnet competition with his friend Horace Smith; both wrote about the same subject. Shelley's version won, and has been remembered for two centuries. The irony is perfect: the king who commanded despair is now nothing but shattered stone. The boundless and bare sands stretch far away. It is a poem about power, about time, about the vanity of human ambition. It fits on half a page and contains eternity.