A Favourite

I've decided that, every once in a while, I'll put up one of my favourite poems, just for fun. Most of the poetry I like is great to read aloud. Figures, huh?

OZYMANDIAS--Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from and 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.

Doesn't that paint a wonderful picture of Vanity? I first read this in high school, and it was the first thing I read by Shelley that I truly understood and liked. After I found it, I used to go around telling my friends, "A sonnet is worth a thousand words!"