Ozymandias (draft manuscript)

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

For other versions of this work, see Ozymandias (Shelley).

Photo of the manuscript.

Ozymandias.

I met a traveller from an antique land,Who He said— “two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desart... 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 readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;And on the pedestal, this legend clear:My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!Nothing remains beside. Round the decayOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.”