Conversations at the Coffee Shop

Conversations with Warren, one of the baristas at El Diablo, can range the gammit from modern events to great literature to regional cuisine to points unknown. This morning, it was literature, begun with Warren's comment that when he got snowed in, he planted paperwhites. As opposed to say Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein over the course of a 'wet, ungenial summer' as part of an informal writing competition.

Talk then turned to Percy's Ozymandias which, Warren shared, was the product of yet another competition. Warren's comment that the runner-ups poem wasn't shabby either led me to an internet search. Here's the competition, also titled Ozymandias:

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,"
The King of Kings; this mighty City shows"
The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

by Horace Smith

I liked the poem, so I thought I'd share.