Published in 1818, ‘Ozymandias’ is one of Shelley’s most anthologized and perhaps most renowned short poems, although it does not deal with expression, beauty, love, or imagination. The ruined statue is not only a monument to remind the magnitude of the king, but also a powerful statement about the triviality of human beings to the passage of time.

An in-depth analysis of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s (1792-1822) sonnet: Ozymandias.

I met a traveler 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!
No thing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

A queue of the forgotten dead…

A different look at the poem, “Ozymandias,” by Shelley.