101 Poems, Number 84

Favorite Poems Throughout My Life

84: “Ozymandias,” 1818, by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

I first learned this one in the days

When I was in my “Shelley Phase”—

A phase I’m still traversing now—

I think it’s infinite somehow!

In English 101* I read

It first—and what young Shelley said

Just stuck. The evanescence of

Our human lives—our dreams, our love.

Years later I would once recite

These lines one lovely summer night

For that same prof who’d once taught me

And wished to hear it. I would see

How Time sometimes gives us a chance

To show that we will not forget

The steps that go to that first dance,

A chance to pay a youthful debt.

*Summer Session at Hiram College; 1962; Prof. Charles F. McKinley

Link to poem.