Ozymandias

:This article is about Shelley's poem. For other uses, see Ozymandias (disambiguation).

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OZYMANDIAS of EGYPT

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I met a traveller from an antique land

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Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

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Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

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Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

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And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

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Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

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

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The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.

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And on the pedestal these words appear:

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"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

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Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

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Nothing beside remains: round the decay

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Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

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The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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Ozymandias (oz-ee-MAN-dyus) is a famous sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley, published in 1818. This short poem, probably Shelley's most famous due to its frequent appearance in anthologies, combines a number of great themes — the arrogance and transience of power, the permanence of real art and emotional truth, the contradictory and critical character of the relationship between artist and subject — with striking imagery, a setting that merges exotic distance (Egypt, Ozymandias, the desert) with the more familiar and topical (Napoleon I of France and a European, presumably English, traveller/commentator — an echo of the viator of classical epitaphs), and virtuoso diction.

Related Topics:
Sonnet - Percy Bysshe Shelley - 1818 - Poem - Anthologies - Egypt - Napoleon I of France - English - Viator - Epitaph

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