Shelley (Masters workshop)

The original

Ozymandias
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 beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

My version.

Ramses the second.

He’s buried in the sand yet rising tall.
Unmovable, unstoppable, a Master of us all.
The legends hold us rapt and won’t let go.
Our books, our films, in some their dreams will show
just how he holds, though millennia dead.
Millennia dead and we know that he said-
“Look on my works and despair.”
It’s written in the stone, it’s written in the air.
His face is Empire.
His body grips the Earth.
None in remembrance length can surpass.
The grains wide about are filled with a mass.
Witness the knee prints of ghosts in the sand,
then look to his eyes and their cold reprimand.