OZY M AN D I A

S on e o f as
Percy Bysshe Shelley w
a jor E n g lish Ro ma n ti c poets
the m

( August 4, 1792 - July

8, 1 82 2 )  
The story is told by a
narrator who visited an
Ancient land of Egypt
recently and saw some
remarkable features of
once Great civilization of
Egypt in 13th century.
 "Ozymandias" is an Italian Sonnet of two stanzas: Sestet Octave
 It was first published in the 11 January 1818 in the Examiner.
 Two themes of the “Ozymandias" poems are:
 the inevitable decline of rulers and
 their pretensions/ affectations to greatness.
 The poem has been cited as Shelley's "best-known poem and is generally
considered one of his best works.
 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.
Context:
It is an ironical poem which describes the pride of man and
miserable reality of his life. Man becomes proud of his worldly
success and thinks that he has conquered the world. He forgets that
time brings happiness as well as sorrow and death is a great leveller.
All feelings of superiority in man are only an illusion. The poet has
beautifully linked the pride and the wrecked reality of life with
Ozymandias and his achievements. When a man gets power, he
becomes proud, merciless and cruel. He enjoys the luxuries of life
and forgets his end. The poet has conveyed the idea that the feelings
of superiority in a man are only self-deception. The reality is death.
  Traveller tourist, voyager
 Antique ancient, primitive, old
 Vast
enormous, huge, immense
I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
 trunkless bodiless, without torso
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,  Half-sunk half-buried
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,  Shattered
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, smashed, fragmented, broken
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Visage face, countenance
wrinkled twisted, having lines
Sneer scorn, disdain, contempt
Sculptor owner, idol-maker
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. In these lines, the poet tells that he met a traveller who visited an old and
deserted land at Thebes, in Egypt where a great civilizations once existed. The
traveler told him that he saw two big legs standing in the desert. The two huge legs,
which were made of stone, were standing without the upper part of the body. The
other part of the statue lay nearby. The arms and the face were broken and it was in a
miserable condition. It was half sunk into the sand. The sand and dust covered the
body. Yet the signs of displeasure and expressions of ruthlessness and pride could be
noticed on the face of the sculpture.
The poet says that the skillful hands of the sculptor had left the accurate expression
of the man into his sculptor. The expression of aggression, power, and pride was
even obvious on the lifeless body of the King. The poet has tried to explain that
immorality has a permanent impression on our body as well as on our soul. So, it
cannot be erased even a man passes away.
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless
things,  Survive remain, exist
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that  mocked ridiculed, jeered at
fed;
 Pedestal base, foundation
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
 colossal large, gigantic, massive
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
 Boundless limitless, unending
“Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
 stretch spread, extend, span
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
 Works achievements
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
In these lines, the poet has described the mortality of man’s life and goes on to explain that
time not only has destroyed this statue, it also essentially erased the entire kingdom the statue
was built to overlook. The speaker immediately follows the king’s declaration found on the
pedestal of the statue—“Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” The texts tells that the
name of the king was Ozymandias. He was the most powerful king. He ordered the kings to
see his statue and feel belittled. But the tragedy is that now nothing remains except a lifeless
statue of the king. The huge statue itself tells about the glory of the king. But now this huge
and splendid statue has fallen the victim of nature. The broken pieces of the statue are being
vanished in the sand. The sand is stretching far away and the statue of King Ozymandias is
getting a thick layer of sand on it. It cannot be seen anywhere. 
Ozymandias had believed that while he himself would die, he would leave a lasting and
intimidating legacy through everything he built. Yet his words are ultimately empty, as
everything he built has crumbled. The people and places he ruled over are gone, leaving only
an abandoned desert whose “lone and level sands” imply that there's not even a trace of the
kingdom’s former glory to be found. The pedestal’s claim that onlookers should despair at
Ozymandias’s works thus takes on a new and ironic meaning: one despairs not at
Ozymandias’s power, but at how powerless time and decay make everyone.