Poets' Corner - Horace Smith

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Ozymandias

[Editors Note: Horace Smith was a friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and helped to manage his finances. Inspired by Diodorus Siculus (Book 1, Chapter 47), they each wrote and submitted a sonnet on the subject to The Examiner. Shelley's was published on January 11, 1818 under the pen name Glirastes, and Smith's was published on February 1, 1818 with the initials H.S. Smith's poem was later published under the title "On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below." in his collection Amarynthus. --Brian Habing]

IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desart 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.: Horace Smith

Index to poems in the collection by Horace Smith