Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair

I'm starting off my blog with a poem, which is always a bad sign - but don't fear, it’s probably the finest poem in the English langauge. Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, was published in 1818, and hasn’t been beaten yet.

Strictly speaking, it’s about Ramesses the Great, but so skilled is the writer that. . . well, he could be describing us. All empires, at the time, are too big to fall.

Ozymandias

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