This is a podcast episode from about two years ago. I'm still in the US at my mother's house, recovering from surgery. I'll be OK eventually, buy my wounds are healing slower than usual. I'm resting a lot, and enjoying being with my mother and her three cats. I really miss my students n China, but I can't return there until I am completely healed, and that will take some more time.

LnR 073 Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley (Replay)

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/poetrycompetition/article3228951.ece

For a change, I'm giving you a very short podcast episode. It's just one poem by a famous British poet.

Sometimes I wonder if you think my podcasts are too long. Maybe I talk too much. :-) This one has the text of the poem and very little talking.

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.”