"Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!":
Happy Birthday, Dear Shelley!

Today would have been Percy Bysshe Shelley's 216th birthday. He died of drowning when he was only 29, but is considered immortal because of his poetry. He is best known for other poems (like "Ode To The West Wind"), but here is my favorite of his works:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller 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.”