Ozymandias

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley is a traveller's description of a huge, broken statue of an ancient king, lying in the desert. The words on its base boast of the king's power, but nothing is left around it except sand.

Shelley was one of the Romantic poets. He was a radical who hated tyranny, and the poem, published in 1818, mocks rulers who think their power will last. Ozymandias is a Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II.

The poem is a sonnet: fourteen lines in one stanza, with a rhyme scheme that mixes two traditional patterns. It is told at second hand: ‘I met a traveller from an antique land’, so the king's story reaches us through layers of retelling, as if from far away in time.

The volta, or turn, comes with the inscription:

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.

The boast is followed at once by ‘Nothing beside remains.’ The short, flat sentence after the caesura crushes the king's pride.

The statue is broken: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone’ stand in the desert, and the face lies ‘Half sunk’. The king's expression, a ‘sneer of cold command’, shows his cruelty and arrogance.

The inscription commands, ‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ The irony is that the other mighty rulers should despair, not because his works are great, but because they too will crumble.

The alliteration of ‘The lone and level sands stretch far away’ makes the desert feel endless. Time and nature outlast every tyrant.

Themes: the power of humans, and its limits; pride and arrogance; the power of time and nature.

Compares well with:

• My Last Duchess: an arrogant, controlling ruler.
• Tissue: human power is fragile and temporary.
• London: a Romantic poet's protest against people in power.