Reply to a Ruin (After Ozymandias)

You praise the sand too soon. What stone survives With no hand first bidding stone arise? Oh broken mouth, whose sneer your traveller gives To dust, once made ten thousand men avert Their eyes. The desert knows me. Underneath Your boot lie gates, bronze horses, cups, the bones Of boys who learned my victories by heart, Then grew to fathers, died, forgot their sons. You say: Look on my works. You laugh. Look well. What king requires his kingdom to remain? Hand falls off. Empire takes another Name. Men strike my face from every coin, Then kneel to men whose faces too shall fall. The sand has buried me. It buries all.