Ozymandias
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.”
In 1816, just two years before the poem was published, a large fragment of a 13th century BC statue of Ramesses had been brought to Europe, and was eagerly anticipated in London. The statue arrived in London in 1821, and can still be seen at the British Museum.
Précis
Shelley recalls the description of a broken statue of a haughty pharaoh, with some lines engraved into the pedestal bragging of his power. Enough remained to see both the king’s pride, and the willingness of the contemptuous sculptor to show it as exaggeratedly as he dared; yet in all that wide, empty land nothing of his boasted empire was left. (60 / 60 words)