special guest poet Percy Bysshe Shelley

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 those lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is the Johnston Press, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that collossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.


(James Healy was fired by the Johnston Press from the Leinster Leader last year three weeks before Christmas. He had worked for the Leinster Leader for ten years. - Percy Bysshe Shelley note.)