Poetry Slam 2013, Week #3

This week, I'm kicking it old school with some Shelley.   If there's a poet that I'm sort of obligated to give a shout out too, it's Shelley for two reasons.  First, his wife wrote Frankenstein, which is really cool but second of all, this guy is lurking somewhere back in the far and distant recesses of my family tree.   And that's really cool...

He ended up drowning at the age of 29- but his memorial in Oxford is beautiful:

It's located at University College in Oxford- but it's not open to the public- but if you go to the northwest gate and sweet talk the porter, he might just let you take a look at it.  (For the record, if memory serves we might have been in the middle of exam week when were in Oxford so it could be a little more open to the public at other times during the year- but for whatever reason, we had to ask nicely to go see it.   And it's worth seeing...)

So without further ado:

Ozymandias: Percy Bysshe Shelley
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.'