What About the "Other" Shelley?

It's true. When somebody mentions Shelley, which Shelley comes to mind? Is it the famous author of Frankenstein or the revolutionary Romantic poet (famous for his association with Lord Byron and other Romantics of the time)? Do you think of Percy Bysshe Shelley first?

In a recent article for The Guardian, Biographer Ann Wroe asks, "What has become of Shelley, and how have we made him like this? Even poets have betrayed him." Have you forgotten the Romantic Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; or is he still the first one that you think about when someone drops that name: "Shelley"?

Here's Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley:

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."

Read a few more works from Percy Bysshe Shelley.



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