Next in a series on romantic literature, this poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley is a classic. Published in 1818, it is one of Shelley’s most famous works.

The romantic poets were lovers of antiquities and their writings dwelt on themes such as fate and the supremacy of nature over human efforts.

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.

Written a year after the British Museum acquired a fragment of the statue of Rameses II from the 13th century BC. The poem explores the nature of the impermanence of even the greatest of civilizations; even their legacies fade into obscurity and oblivion.