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Ozymandias Lives
Shelly spoke his name centuries later, and two centuries after Shelly so do I.
The lone and level sands may have long buried the ancient king's stone-
carved vanity, or the statue might have been hauled away as a trophy for an English
gentleman's garden,
to be splattered white with pigeon droppings.
Yet his name is still spoken, for I speak it now and you nod yes.
So Shelly also sculpted Ozymandias, not with chisel but with pen.
But statues erode, now, later, or are smashed with hammers.
Yet generations of readers scan Shelly's rhyme, meter, and metaphor,
while sneering Ozymandias cheats that second death called forgotten.
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