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.”

Form: Sonnet -
Rhyme Scheme: ABABACDC EDEFEF + https://literarydevices.net/ozymandias/
Meter: Iambic Pentameter

Ozymandias, one of Shelley!s most famous sonnets, is a political poem at heart, written at a time when Na-
poleon's domination of Europe was coming to an end and another empire, that of Great Britain's, was about
to take over. Shelley's poem becomes a metaphor of the the transient nature of power, the end of tyranny,
and the ravages of times.
Ozymandias was the Greek name of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II who ruled around 1300 B.C, A
broken, weathered statue lies now in a desert: the "king of the kings" has been left to history and buried in
the sand by the passing of time.The inscription stands in ironic contrast to the objective conditions of the
statue, underscoring the ultimate transience of political power.

Form and Literary Devices

Shelley uses the rst person pronoun "I" to begin his sonnet then cleverly switches the focus to a third per-
son, a traveler, whose words are contained in the remaining thirteen lines. This was highly unusual for a
sonnet at the time and re ects the poet's innovative style. The reader is effectively listening in to a conver-
sation between two people, one recently returned from a journey through an ancient country. It is this per-
son's narrative that describes the huge statue in the sands of the desert, a former monument of a great
leader, now in pieces and forgotten.
Shelley's sonnet has the traditional 14 lines and is mostly iambic pentameter, but the rhyme scheme is dif-
ferent, being ababacdcedefef, re ecting an unorthodox approach to the subject. It's not a Shakespearean
sonnet, nor is it a Petrarchan - the poet made certain of its individuality by choosing not to introduce a 'turn'
after the second quatrain. Instead there is a simple shift of emphasis, the narrator sharing the words on the
pedestal that are in effect, the words of the fallen leader.

Interpretation
Ozymandias is a commentary on the ephemeral nature of absolute political power. Monarchs, dictators and
tyrants are all subject to disappear. Note the use of sunk/ shattered/ sneer of cold command/ lifeless/ moc-
ked/ fed/ decay/ bare/ lone....words that seek to undermine those in positions of privilege and power.
Written in 1817, Shelley no doubt had opinions on the state of Britain and Europe at that time and Ozy-
mandias could well have been in uenced by the life of one Napoleon Bonaparte, the would-be Emperor of
all Europe and beyond. He had invaded Egypt a few years earlier and fought with the British to keep control
of the Nile and its lands. Napoleon eventually lost out and was exiled to a distant island, St Helena, where
he died in 1821.
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