Poetry

Ozymandias
I met a traveler 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.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

From "Geetanjali"
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come from the depths of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sands of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.
-- Rabindranath Tagore