Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, one of my favorite times of the year! We have some great events going on at the Library to celebrate this month (which I'll go into in depth later), so I hope you'll come in and join us. Here's a well-known offering to kick off the month:

OZYMANDIAS

by 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.'

Percy Bysshe Shelley was an Englishman who wrote at the beginning of the 19th century, one of the great Romantic poets. His wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, achieved fame in her own right as the author of that quintessential horror story "Frankenstein". Followers of current films or readers of graphic novels may recognize the name "Ozymandias" from "The Watchmen".