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Ozymandias
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"Shall I Compare Thee to a Backfill Pile?"
April 27, 2000
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by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and 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:
'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.
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© 2000 by the Archaeological Institute of America
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