OZYMANDIAS.
[Published by Hunt in “The Examiner”, January, 1818. Reprinted with
“Rosalind and Helen”, 1819. There is a copy amongst the Shelley
manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C.D. Locock’s
“Examination”, etc., 1903, page 46.]
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, _5
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: _10
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.
NOTE: _9 these words appear]this legend clear B.
***
NOTE ON POEMS OF 1817, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
The very illness that oppressed, and the aspect of death which had approached so near Shelley, appear to have kindled to yet keener life the Spirit of Poetry in his heart. The restless thoughts kept awake by pain clothed themselves in verse. Much was composed during this year. The “Revolt of Islam”, written and printed, was a great effort—“Rosalind and Helen” was begun—and the fragments and poems I can trace to the same period show how full of passion and reflection were his solitary hours.
In addition to such poems as have an intelligible aim and shape, many a stray idea and transitory emotion found imperfect and abrupt expression, and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never wandered without a book and without implements of writing, I find many such, in his manuscript books, that scarcely bear record; while some of them, broken and vague as they are, will appear valuable to those who love Shelley’s mind, and desire to trace its workings.
He projected also translating the “Hymns” of Homer; his version of several of the shorter ones remains, as well as that to Mercury already published in the “Posthumous Poems”. His readings this year were chiefly Greek. Besides the “Hymns” of Homer and the “Iliad”, he read the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles, the “Symposium” of Plato, and Arrian’s “Historia Indica”. In Latin, Apuleius alone is named. In English, the Bible was his constant study; he read a great portion of it aloud in the evening. Among these evening readings I find also mentioned the “Faerie Queen”; and other modern works, the production of his contemporaries, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore and Byron.
His life was now spent more in thought than action—he had lost the eager spirit which believed it could achieve what it projected for the benefit of mankind. And yet in the converse of daily life Shelley was far from being a melancholy man. He was eloquent when philosophy or politics or taste were the subjects of conversation. He was playful; and indulged in the wild spirit that mocked itself and others—not in bitterness, but in sport. The author of “Nightmare Abbey” seized on some points of his character and some habits of his life when he painted Scythrop. He was not addicted to ‘port or madeira,’ but in youth he had read of ‘Illuminati and Eleutherarchs,’ and believed that he possessed the power of operating an immediate change in the minds of men and the state of society. These wild dreams had faded; sorrow and adversity had struck home; but he struggled with despondency as he did with physical pain. There are few who remember him sailing paper boats, and watching the navigation of his tiny craft with eagerness—or repeating with wild energy “The Ancient Mariner”, and Southey’s “Old Woman of Berkeley”; but those who do will recollect that it was in such, and in the creations of his own fancy when that was most daring and ideal, that he sheltered himself from the storms and disappointments, the pain and sorrow, that beset his life.