Ozymandias

“Ozymandias” is a masterful sonnet. Essentially it is devoted to a single metaphor. It was written by Shelley in competition with his friend Horace Smith. Shelley appears to have borrowed the subject of Ozymandias from the Greek history of Diodorus Siculus, who describes a memorial of a king Ozymandias. The speaker recalls having met a traveler “from an antique land,” who told him a story about the ruins of a statue in the desert of his native country. Two vast legs of stone stand without a body, and near them a massive, crumbling stone head lies “half sunk” in the sand. The traveler told the speaker that the frown and “sneer of cold command” on the statue’s face indicate that the sculptor understood well the passions of the statue’s subject, a man who sneered with contempt for those weaker than himself, yet fed his people because of something in his heart. On the pedestal of the statue appear the words: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” But around the decaying ruin of the statue, nothing remains, only the “lone and level sands,” which stretch out around it, far away. The statue of king Ozymandias depicts the expression of arrogance, contempt, cruelty and confidence even today. His face depicts his frown and sneer nature with his upper lips curled as if in scorn.

Shelley describes Ozymandias as being full of ‘passions’ and ‘heart’ but also as ‘cold’: his passion is for power, as where he commands ‘Despair!’ and describes himself as ‘king of kings’. In this image, which evokes Christ, Shelley shows the hubris of Ozymandias since he compares this man’s god like arrogance to Christ, unfavorably. Ozymandias seems to believe his works will live forever ‘Look on my works’, but as the traveller shows, there’s little left of the ‘colossal wreck.’ The oxymoron shows the contradiction in the poem of Ozymandias’ self-perception of immortality, and the reality that all earthly power will pass away, leaving the world ‘boundless and bare’. The desert’s power is emphasized over that of Ozymandias: it stretches, vast, infinite. The only real legacy the king leaves is evidence of his pride, and cruelty: ‘nothing beside remains’.The statue, and the words of the king, Ozymandias, are symbols of the transience of man’s greatness and self-belief. This sonnet from 1817 is probably Shelley’s most famous and most anthologized poem—which is somewhat strange, considering that it is in many ways an atypical poem for Shelley,