Poem of the Week: Ozymandias

aka On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below
by Horace Smith

As detailed last Friday, I've had this poetic pair lined up since November to tie in with the cinema release of Watchmen. It was great, wasn't it? What do you mean you've not seen it yet?

Anyway, here's the second of the pair:

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.

Again as explained before, this was written in 1817 (published sometime in early 1818) as part of a writing competition with Smith's friend, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley's poem is well-remembered and quoted; Smith's is now mainly known as a footnote. Poor guy.

Next week, no more tenuously-linked-to-new-releases poetry. Promise. (It's explicitly linked instead.)