![]() ![]() “The Shelley-Godwin Archive will provide the digitized manuscripts of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, William Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft, bringing together online for the first time ever the widely dispersed handwritten legacy of this uniquely gifted family of writers. If you’d like to research more of Shelley’s works, take a look at The Shelley-Godwin Archive. “Ozymandias – The Bodleian Draft” by Patrick Gillespie For Further Research “An introduction to ‘Ozymandias’” by Stephen Hebron Shelley’s Ghost (A Bodleian Libraries exhibition in partnership with The New York Public Library) The British Library record for The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian Check them out if you’re interested in the creative process of composing a poem or the difficult work of transcribing handwriting. ![]() An alternate transcript is provided on the blog PoemShape. On their website you can read a transcript of the manuscript. 4 Credit: Bodleian Library, University of OxfordThis hand-written manuscript of Shelley’s poem is held at the Bodleian Library. Notably his statue is lying in a desert, while the actual statue stood at a temple entrance and depicts a seated monarch. Of course Shelley’s poem was only inspired by the statue and his description is very different than the real thing. The statue itself was brought from Egypt to England in 1818 and can still be seen in the British Museum (see above photo). Smith’s version is, “I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone, / “The King of Kings this mighty City shows / “The wonders of my hand.” In Shelley’s poem the inscription reads, ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ The English translation by George Booth was published in 1814.īooth describes a colossal statue of Ramases II and translates its inscription thus: ‘I am Osymandyas, king of kings if any would know how great I am, and where I lie, let him excel me in any of my works’ Shelley had requested Diodorus’ works in Latin in December 1812. The poets must have been inspired by The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian written in the first century BC. ![]() The sonnet competition took place in December 1817. He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace, Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness ![]() “The wonders of my hand.”- The City’s gone,. “The King of Kings this mighty City shows “I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone, Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws The lone and level sands stretch far away. Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed. Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frownĪnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone I used to have it memorized and was fond of using to explain the concept of irony.īut I never knew that he wrote it in competition with a poet friend and houseguest, Horace Smith, whose sonnet of the same name was published a month later in the same publication ( The Examiner). Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” has long been one of my favourite poems. ![]()
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