A POEM BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY⠀•⠀A WOODBLOCK PRINT BY ROCKWELL KENT

In 1817, poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Horace Smith decided to each write a poem titled “Ozymandias,” an ancient Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II. While Smith’s Ozymandias is largely forgotten, Shelley’s endures as among the most famous poems ever penned in English. The sonnet tells the tale of a traveler who came upon the nearly buried ruins of an ancient monument. The fragment boasts,

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

And yet, of these works, nothing but the fragment itself remains. It is a tragic, almost cruel, view of the titular character, who endures now as a name only and nothing more.

The poem is accompanied by Rockwell Kent’s Flame.