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On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below.
by
Horace Smith*


[composed December 27, 1817 during a sonnet-writing competition with Percy Bysshe Shelley (who wrote "Ozymandias" as a result); published 1818]

  In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
  Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
  The only shadow that the Desert knows.
  "I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone,
5 "The King of kings: this mighty city shows
  The wonders of my hand." The city's gone!
  Naught but the leg remaining to disclose
  The sight of that forgotten Babylon.
  We wonder, and some hunter may express
10 Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
  Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,
  He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
  What wonderful, but unrecorded, race
  Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

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