English Literature Annotated texts

Spec 8702

OzymandiasPoem

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Shelley presents political power as temporary: Ozymandias’s arrogant attempt to make himself immortal is defeated by time, decay and the natural landscape. The poem’s layered narration and fractured sonnet form make his once-imperial authority seem reduced to a ruin and a warning.

I met a traveller 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!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Text: The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Thomas Hutchinson (Oxford, 1914) — text as first published in The Examiner, 1818. Source · Revision guide ·

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