Of That Colossal Wreck

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.”

---P. B. Shelley

Photo: Death Valley, California

One of the best known sonnets outside of Shakespeare in the English language, attaining new meaning this week.  Most commentaries on the Internet are pretty shallow, but scholar David Mikics is informative.  For one thing he explains that the word "mocked" in the line "The hand that mocked them" is used primarily in the old sense of meaning "described" (or perhaps just what the sculptor does--makes an image in the stone.)  Though our sense of mocked is of course the judgment of time.