Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; with Other Poems is a volume by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1819. The title poem is a dialogue between two women who tell each other their unhappy lives. The short poems that follow include the sonnet Ozymandias, one of the most famous poems in English.
The title poem
Two old friends, Rosalind and Helen, meet again by Lake Como after years apart. Each tells her story of suffering, one in a loveless marriage, the other after the death of the man she loved.
Shelley began the poem in 1817 at the suggestion of his wife Mary, and finished it in Italy in 1818.
Ozymandias
The sonnet describes a traveller's account of a ruined statue in the desert, whose inscription boasts of a king's power over a landscape now empty.
Shelley wrote it in late 1817 in a friendly contest with his friend Horace Smith, who wrote a sonnet on the same subject.
Other poems
The volume also includes Lines Written among the Euganean Hills, a long meditation written in northern Italy, and the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.
It shows Shelley moving from narrative verse to the lyric power of his later work.
Anecdotes
Ramesses II
Ozymandias is the Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II. The poem was written as the British Museum was preparing to receive a huge fragment of his statue.
First in a newspaper
Ozymandias first appeared in January 1818 in Leigh Hunt's weekly paper The Examiner, under a pen name, before being collected in this volume.
Frequently asked questions
When was the volume published?
In 1819.
Who are Rosalind and Helen?
Two women who tell each other their life stories.
Which famous sonnet does it contain?
Ozymandias.