Poetry Corner

I came across this poem once in a comic book: a small child found the head of the defeated and deactivated Ultron, invincible robotic foe of the Avengers, lying in a rubbish heap: the boy, not knowing this to be the relic of a world-conquering super-machine, used the metal head for a soccer ball. Who says comics can’t teach fine literature?

Ozymandias

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

    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,
    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.”

What will remain of our own empires and triumphs once history has swept us away, O men of the West?