Jayne, (belatedly) thanks for your feedback! - most welcome.
Mary, your Christmas with the In-Laws Up North provoked hearty laughter - especially that last line!
I've re-jigged my original clunky attempt somewhat.
The Encounter
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings.
On the last Sabbath day of 1879
I wandered lonely as a cloud
Shop after shop, with symbols, blazoned names;
Then after roaming far and wide,
Half a league, half a league,
I came upon her without warning,
Wearing white for Eastertide;
Then let no winter’s ragged hand deface
Handsomest of all the women:
Full beautiful – a faery’s child!
Such a carriage, such ease and such grace!
“I’ve a sceptre in hand, I’ve a crown on my head –“
"O stay," the maiden said, "and rest
In the tea-shop’s ingle-nook.”
I won the Queen because my hair was red.
Sources:
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
William Topaz McGonagall, the Tay Bridge Disaster
William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
William Wordsworth, The Prelude, book 7
Robert Service, The Quest
Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade
Robert Graves, Darien
AE Housman, Loveliest of trees
William Shakespeare, Sonnets, VI
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hiawatha’s Wooing
John Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, IV
Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark, Fit the 2nd
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, IX
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Excelsior
John Betjeman, In a Bath tea-Shop
WH Auden, The Quest, XV
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