Ozymandias
The poem is a sonnet by Percy
Bysshe Shelley. It was in 1817 as part of a poetry contest with a friend and it
was published in “The Examiner” in 1818. The title of the poem “Ozymandias”
refers to the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II. The poem is about the transience of
power and human life in contrast with the ability of the art to sustain the
test of time. It also has the ability to preserve the past. The poem breaks
away from the typical sonnet tradition in both form and rhyme which shows
Shelley’s interest in challenging both poetic and political conventions.
Text of the poem
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.”
Summary of
the Poem
The speaker
meets a traveller who came from an ancient land. The traveller narrates
that he saw
two large trunkless legs of a statue in the desert. There was a broken face
of the statue
lying near the legs. It was half buried in sand. The facial expressions of the
statue, the
frown on his forehead and wrinkled lips combine to form a haughty sneer. It
shows the
expertise of the sculptor who very skilfully recreated those expressions. On
the
pedestal of the statue the following words inscribed: “My name is Ozymandias,
the
king of
kings. You powerful rulers of the world, look at what I have built and achieved,
and despair
at the thought that you cannot emulate it. Now nothing of the former glory
of this
king remains. There is vast empty and flat sand surrounding the remains of the
large
statue in a never ending and barren desert.
Themes
in the Poem
Transience
of Power
One of Shelley’s most famous works,
“Ozymandias” describes the ruins of an ancient king’s statue in a foreign
desert. All that remains of the statue are two “vast” stone legs standing
upright and a head half-buried in sand, along with a boastful inscription
describing the ruler as the “king of kings” whose mighty achievements invoke
awe and despair in all who behold them. The inscription stands in ironic contrast to the decrepit
reality of the statue, however, underscoring the ultimate transience of
political power. The poem implicitly critiques such power through its
suggestion that both great rulers and their kingdoms will fall to the sands of
time.
In the poem, the speaker relates a story
a traveler told him about the ruins of a “colossal wreck” of a sculpture whose
decaying physical state mirrors the dissolution of its
subject’s—Ozymandias’s—power. Only two upright legs, a face, and a pedestal remain
of Ozymandias’s original statue, and even these individual parts of the statue
are not in great shape: the face, for instance, is “shattered." Clearly,
time hasn’t been kind to this statue, whose pitiful state undercuts the bold
assertion of its inscription. The fact that even this “king of kings” lies
decaying in a distant desert suggests that no amount of power can withstand the
merciless and unceasing passage of time.
The speaker goes on to explain that time
not only destroyed this statue, it also essentially erased the entire kingdom
the statue was built to overlook. The speaker immediately follows the king’s
declaration found on the pedestal of the statue—“Look upon my works, ye Mighty,
and despair!”—with the line “Nothing beside remains.” Such a savage
contradiction makes the king’s prideful dare almost comically naïve.
Ozymandias had believed that while he
himself would die, he would leave a lasting and intimidating legacy through
everything he built. Yet his words are ultimately empty, as everything he built
has crumbled. The people and places he ruled over are gone, leaving only an
abandoned desert whose “lone and level sands” imply that there's not even a
trace of the kingdom’s former glory to be found. The pedestal’s claim that
onlookers should despair at Ozymandias’s works thus takes on a new and ironic
meaning: one despairs not at Ozymandias’s power, but at how powerless time and
decay make everyone.
The speaker also uses the specific
example of Ozymandias to make a broader pronouncement about the ephemeral
nature of power and, in turn, to implicitly critique tyranny. The speaker
evokes the image of a cruel leader; Ozymandias wears a “frown” along with the
“sneer of cold command." That such “passions” are now recorded only on
“lifeless things” (i.e., the statue) is a clear rebuke of such a ruler, and
suggests that the speaker believes such tyranny now only exists on the face of
a dead and crumbling piece of stone.
The poem's depiction of the destruction
of Ozymandias and his tyranny isn’t entirely fictional: Ozymandias is the Greek
name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II, who dramatically expanded Egypt’s
empire and who had several statues of himself built throughout Egypt. In fact,
the Ancient Greek writer Diodorus Siculus reported the following inscription on
the base of one of Ozymandias’s statues: "King of Kings am I, Ozymandias.
If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my
works." By alluding to an actual ancient empire, and an actual king, the
poem reminds readers that history is full of the rises and falls of empires. No
power is permanent, regardless of how omnipotent a ruler believes himself to
be. Even the “king of kings” may one day be a forgotten relic of an “antique
land.”
The Power of
Art
“Ozymandias” famously describes a ruined
statue of an ancient king in an empty desert. Although the king’s statue
boastfully commands onlookers to “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair,”
there are no works left to examine: the king’s cities, empire, and power have
all disappeared over time. Yet even as the poem insists that “nothing beside”
the shattered statue and its pedestal remains, there is one thing that actually
has withstood the centuries: art. The skillful rendering of the statue itself
and the words carved alongside it have survived long after Ozymandias and his
kingdom turned to dust, and through this Shelley’s poem positions art as
perhaps the most enduring tool in preserving humanity’s legacy.
Although the statue is a “wreck” in a
state of “decay,” its individual pieces show the skill of the sculptor and
preserve the story of Ozymandias. The face is “shattered,” leaving only a mouth
and nose above the desert sand, but the “frown,” “wrinkled lip,” and “sneer”
clearly show Ozymandias’s “passions” (that is, his pride, tyranny, and disdain
for others). The fragments interpret and preserve the king’s personality and
show onlookers throughout history what sort of a man and leader Ozymandias
truly was.
These fragments, then, are examples of
art’s unique ability to capture and relate an individual’s character even after
their death. In fact, the poem explicitly emphasizes art’s ability to bring
personalities to life: the speaker explains that Ozymandias’s “passions” “yet
survive” on the broken statue despite being carved on “lifeless” stone.
Ozymandias may be dead, yet, thanks to the sculptor who “read” those “passions”
and “mocked,” or made an artistic reproduction of them, his personality and
emotions live.
In addition to highlighting the
sculptor’s artistic skill, Shelley’s poem also elevates the act of writing
through its focus on the inscription of the statue’s pedestal. The pedestal
preserves Ozymandias’ identity even more explicitly than the statue itself. The
inscription reveals his name, his status as royalty (“King of Kings”), and his
command for “Mighty” onlookers to “despair” at his superiority and strength.
His words are thus a lasting testament to his hubris, yet it is notably only
the words themselves—rather than the threat behind them—that survive. Without
this inscription, none would know Ozymandias’s name nor the irony of his final proclamation.
In other words, his legacy and its
failure only exist because a work of art—specifically, a written work—preserved
them. The poem therefore presents art as a means to immortality; while
everything else disappears, art, even when broken and half-buried in sand, can
carry humanity’s legacy.
This power of art is reflected by the
composition of the poem itself. Shelley was aware that the ancient Greek writer
Diodorus Siculus had described a statue of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II and
had transcribed the inscription on its pedestal as "King of Kings am I,
Ozymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him
surpass one of my works." Shelley’s poem exists solely because of
Siculus’s description: Shelley and his friend and fellow writer Horace Smith
had challenged each other to a friendly competition over who could write the
best poem inspired by Siculus's description. This poem was Shelley’s entry, and
it became by far the more famous of the two. Like Siculus’ description of the
statue, this poem keeps Ozymandias’s story and words alive for subsequent
generations.
The very composition of this poem, then,
dramatizes the power of art: art can preserve people, objects, cities, and
empires, giving them a sort of immortality, and letting future generations
“look on [past] works” not with despair, but with wonder.
Man Versus
Nature
As a Romantic poet, Shelley was deeply
respectful of nature and skeptical of humanity’s attempts to dominate it.
Fittingly, his “Ozymandias” is not simply a warning about the transience of
political power, but also an assertion of humanity’s impotence compared to the
natural world. The statue the poem describes has very likely become a “colossal
Wreck” precisely because of the relentless forces of sand and wind erosion in
the desert. This combined with the fact that “lone and level sands” have taken
over everything that once surrounded the statue suggests nature as an
unstoppable force to which human beings are ultimately subservient.
Shelley’s imagery suggests a natural
world whose might is far greater than that of humankind. The statue is notably
found in a desert, a landscape hostile towards life. That the statue is
“trunkless” suggests sandstorms eroded the torso or buried it entirely, while
the face being “shattered” implies humanity’s relative weakness: even the
destruction of a hulking piece of stone is nothing for nature.
The fact that the remains of the statute
are “half sunk” under the sand, meanwhile, evokes a kind of burial. In fact,
the statement “nothing beside remains” can be read as casting the fragments of
the statue as the “remains” of a corpse. The encroaching sand described in the
poem suggests that nature has steadily overtaken a once great civilization and
buried it, just as nature will one day reclaim everything humanity has built,
and every individual human as well.
The desert, not Ozymandias, is thus the
most powerful tyrant in Shelley’s poem. It is “boundless” and “stretch[es] far
away” as though it has conquered everything the eye can see, just as it has
conquered Ozymandias’s statue. Ozymandias may be the king of kings, but even
kings can be toppled by mere grains.
Symbols in the
Poem
Sand
In the poem, sand is a symbol of nature’s power and also of
time itself. The sand has eroded and buried the statue and all of Ozymandias’s
works, a reminder that nature can destroy all human achievements, no matter how
substantial. Because it destroyed the statue over time, and because of the idea
of sand in an hourglass, sand also represents time itself, which has similarly
worn down and eventually buried Ozymandias's empire.
The Statue
The statue of Ozymandias has a few
different symbolic meanings. First, it is a
physical representation of the might of human political institutions, such as
Ozymandias’s empire; this is the symbolic purpose for which Ozymandias himself
had the statue built. However, because the statue has fallen into disrepair, it
also holds a symbolic meaning that Ozymandias didn't intend: it represents how
comparatively fragile human political institutions actually are in the face of
both time and nature’s might.
The statue also symbolizes the power of
art. Through the sculptor's skill, the statue captures and preserves the
"passions" of its subject by stamping them on "lifeless"
rock. And the statue also symbolizes the way that art can have power beyond the
intentions of even those who commission it. While Ozymandias saw the statue as
a way to forever capture his power and magnificence, the poem hints that the
statue so thoroughly reveals Ozymandias's haughty cruelty that it also serves
to mock him. While Ozymandias's great works have been destroyed and disappeared
by nature and time, art in the form of the stature endures, keeping
Ozymandias's memory alive (albeit not in entirely the ways he would have
wanted).
It is also possible to interpret the
statue in a third way. Because Ozymandias is clearly a tyrant, the fact that
the statue has become a "wreck" hints that the statue might
symbolically represent the speaker of the poem's hope and belief that tyranny
will always crumble, which also happened to be one of Shelley’s own personal
political passions.
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