Ozymandias

“Ozymandias” is a sonnet written by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley wrote “Ozymandias” in 1817 as part of a poetry contest with a friend and had it published in The Examiner in 1818 under the pen name Glirastes. The title “Ozymandias” refers to an alternate name of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II. In the poem, Shelley describes a crumbling statue of Ozymandias as a way to portray the transience of political power and to praise art’s ability to preserve the past. Although the poem is a 14-line sonnet, it breaks from the typical sonnet tradition in both its form and rhyme scheme, a tactic that reflects Shelley’s interest in challenging conventions, both political and poetic. 

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 shatter’d visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command 5

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: 10

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.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY