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   on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ (lain@lain.com)'s status on Friday, 16-Feb-2024 19:25:40 JST on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ
   Nearly everyone knows Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias", but not many know that it was part of a competition with his friend Horace Smith, where they would both write sonnets on the same theme. It's striking how much better Shelley's version is. Both poems use the same theme and are equally long, but Shelley's version is elegant and flowing while Smith's version is very clunky in comparison. Here are the two poems:
   
   Shelley:
   
   I met a traveller from an antique land
   Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
   Stand in the desart. 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.
   
   Smith:
   
   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,—
   Naught 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 fragment huge, and stops to guess
   What powerful but unrecorded race
   Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
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     御園はくい (hakui@tuusin.misono-ya.info)'s status on Friday, 16-Feb-2024 20:07:32 JST 御園はくい

     in reply to
     @lain smith's version has london destroyed though so i'll give him that
     on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ likes this.
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     vaartis running up that hill (vaartis@pl.kotobank.ch)'s status on Friday, 16-Feb-2024 20:10:09 JST vaartis running up that hill

     in reply to
     @lain i like both of them (but i was previously unfamiliar with either)
     on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ likes this.
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     kakafarm (kakafarm@emacs.ch)'s status on Tuesday, 20-Feb-2024 13:43:31 JST kakafarm

     in reply to

     @lain Smith's second paragraph is pretty good as a microfic, I think. It's basically the ending of Planet of The Apes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDLS12_a-fk

     on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ likes this.