Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Ozymandias on St. Agnes' Eve

Since "The Eve of St. Agnes" apparently looks like "Ozymandias," I present you a jumble of the two, sort of like a cento. I chose the lines from "The Eve of St. Agnes" almost randomly, though; the primary constraint being that the line had to at least sort of make sense with what went before and after. I then tidied up the punctuation a bit.

I met a traveler from an antique land
St. Agnes’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
Emprison’d in black, purgatorial rails:
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Flatter’d to tears this aged man and poor.

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
And all night kept awake, for sinners’ sake to grieve.
Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat’ries
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
With plume, tiara, and all rich array,
The music, yearning like a God in pain,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
Mid looks of love, defiance, hate, and scorn
Of whisperers in anger, or in sport,
Hoodwink’d with faery fancy; all amort,
Save to St. Agnes and her lambs unshorn,
And all the bliss to be before to-morrow morn.

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"Get hence! get hence! there’s dwarfish Hildebrand;
He had a fever late, and in the fit
He cursed thee and thine, both house and land.
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings --
Yet men will murder upon holy days:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
But let me laugh awhile, I’ve mickle time to grieve."

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
So woful, and of such deep sorrowing,
All garlanded with carven imag’ries
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
The lover’s endless minutes slowly pass’d
With silver taper’s light, and pious care.

The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed,
Flutter’d in the besieging wind’s uproar;
And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

Noiseless as fear in a wide wilderness
The lone and level sands stretch far away.