Look on My Works Ye Mighty and Despair/Quotes

Percy Bysshe Shelley's "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.''"

Horace Smith's "Ozymandias":

"''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."

Excerpt from Rudyard Kipling's "Recessional":

"Far-called, our navies melt away; On dune and headland sinks the fire: Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet. Lest we forget--lest we forget!"

Excerpt from Rudyard Kipling's "Hymn of Breaking Strain":

" We hold all Earth to plunder-- All Time and Space as well-- Too wonder-stale to wonder At each new miracle; Till in the mid-illusion Of Godhead 'neath our hand, Falls multiple confusion On all we did or planned-- The mighty works we planned. "