With long sobs
the violin throbs
of autumn wound
my heart with languorous
and monotonous
sound.
Choking and pale
when I mind the tale
the hours keep,
my memory strays
down other days
and I weep;
and let me go
where ill winds blow,
now here, now there,
harried and sped,
even as dead
leaf, anywhere.
By Paul Verlaine
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 besides remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The bone and level sands stretch far away.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
