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Two Shelley Songs for SATB a cappella

 [incomplete]

Song Cycle by Geoffrey Bush (1920 - 1998)

2. Ozymandias  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast [and]1 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]2 Ozimandias, 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 lone and level sands stretch far away.

Text Authorship:

  • by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822), title 1: "Ozymandias", title 2: "Sonnet", first published 1818

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • CZE Czech (Čeština) (Jaroslav Vrchlický) , "Ozymandias"
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Richard Flatter) , "Größe", appears in Die Fähre, Englische Lyrik aus fünf Jahrhunderten, first published 1936
  • HUN Hungarian (Magyar) (Árpád Tóth) , "Ozymandiás"
  • ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Ozymandias", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • POL Polish (Polski) (Adam Asnyk) , "Ozymandyas"

View original text (without footnotes)

Confirmed with The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Volume 2, London, George Bell & Sons, 1892, page 294.

1 omitted by Manno.
2 Manno: "I am"

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 113
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