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.

That’s “Ozymandias,” Shelley’s most popular sonnet. The world was actually offered two entries on this theme: Shelley was writing in competition with his friend Horace Smith, whose own poem appeared in The Examiner three weeks later. Here’s his try:

In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,

Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws

The only shadow that the Desert knows:–

“I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone,

“The King of Kings; this mighty City shows

“The wonders of my hand.”– The City’s gone,–

Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose

The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,–and some Hunter may express

Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness

Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,

He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess

What powerful but unrecorded race

Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Enchantingly, Smith titled this “On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below.” You can decide which deserves immortality.