Today is the end of National Poetry Month. I had planned to record a few of my favorite poems as MP3s and present them here, but the aforementioned technical difficulties have kept me from making the recordings. This was really irrritating me, particularly as more time went by, and more money was spent on fruitless attempts to solve the problems. This project became really, really important to me, and it had to be done properly, not in some half-assed fashion. Finally, early this morning I looked over the content of one of the poems, and laughed at the irony. Enjoy…
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.— Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
