The poem starts with two narrators, the "I" and the "traveler" who narrates the story. The traveler begins by describing the statue in the sand: it is a huge pair of bodiless legs standing next to a fallen face. We can only see the lips on the face and they are frowning (something emphasized three times). Then the traveler introduces the sculptor of the statue, indicating that the emotions captured on the "lifeless" face are correct and still show clearly. Line eight indicates that the sculptor somehow made fun of Ozymandias, and the "heart that fed" Ozymandias's passions ("them"), despite this correct depiction of the king himself. From the sculpture and the sculptor, the traveler moves on to finish the image: he describes the inscription on the base of the statue, which names Ozymandias and boasts of his position as the greatest king and of the things he's built. It also challenges other Kings to view what he's built and despair that their kingdoms will never be as great.
After the exclamation point -- the end of the inscription -- Shelley sums up by having the traveler note that there is absolutely nothing beside that wreck of a statue. There is only decay and sand for as far as the eye can see.
is a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1818. It is frequently anthologized and is probably Shelley's most famous short poem.
The central theme of Ozymandias is mankind's arrogance.
Ozymandias was another name for Ramesses the Great, Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt.[3] Ozymandias represents a transliteration into Greek of a part of Ramesses' throne name, User-maat-re Setep-en-re. The sonnet paraphrases the inscription on the base of the statue, given by Diodorus Siculus as "King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works."[4] Shelley's poem is often said to have been inspired by the arrival in London of a colossal statue of Ramesses II, acquired for the British Museum by the Italian adventurer Giovanni Belzoni in 1816.[5] Rodenbeck and Chaney, however,[6] point out that the poem was written and published before the statue arrived in Britain, and thus that Shelley could not have seen it. But its repute in Western Europe preceded its actual arrival in Britain (Napoleon had previously made an unsuccessful attempt to acquire it for France, for example), and thus it may have been its repute or news of its imminent arrival rather than seeing the statue itself which provided the inspiration.
Among the earlier senses of the verb "to mock" is "to fashion an imitation of reality" (as in "a mock-up");[7] but by Shelley's day the current sense "to ridicule" (especially by mimicking) had come to the fore.
The sonnet celebrates the anonymous sculptor and his artistic achievement, whilst Shelley imaginatively surveys the ruins of a bygone power to fashion a sinuous, compact sonnet spun from a traveller's tale of far distant desert ruins. The lone and level sands stretching to the horizon perhaps suggest a resultant barrenness from a misuse of power where "nothing beside remains".
This sonnet is often incorrectly quoted or reproduced[8]. The most common misquotation - "Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" - replaces the correct "on" with "upon", thus turning the regular decasyllabic (iambic pentameter) verse into an 11-syllable line.