Episode #050 Ozymandias - Percy Bysshe Shelley

For the 50th episode of Close Talking, Connor and Jack dive into a classic: Ozymandias. They discuss Percy Bysshe Shelley's many accomplishments, the poem's history, and how the poem has been deployed in popular culture. Jack can't help bringing up Roger Federer, and Connor offers a curated tour of poems about urns, sculptures, and other objects.

Read the poem below.

Poetry Foundation Poem Guide (referenced in the podcast): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69503/percy-bysshe-shelley-ozymandias

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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.”