![]() ![]() The traveler closes his story, and the poem as a whole, by noting that nothing else remains around the ruins of the statue except a vast, unending desert. The inscription proclaims the might of Ozymandias, the king depicted in the statue, and dares other rulers to match his works. The traveler describes the statue’s legs, still standing in the sand, and its half-buried head, before relating the inscription that appears on its base. The poem opens with the speaker meeting an ancient traveler, who tells of a giant, fragmented statue in the middle of an otherwise empty desert. Though Ozymandias, his works, and even the massive statue attesting to his power are long gone, the words describing that statue remain. Shelley never personally laid eyes on either the Younger Memnon or the statue mentioned by Diodorus, making his poem a testament to the power of verbal inspiration, as well as the fashion for ancient Egypt in nineteenth-century England. Both men composed sonnets based on a passage from the ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus regarding a colossal statue of Ozymandias, the Greek name for Rameses II. ![]() ![]() The traveler describes the ruins of a monument he or she saw there: two giant disembodied legs of stone standing upright, and nearby, the half-buried head of the statue. Written around the time of the British acquisition of the Younger Memnon, part of an ancient Egyptian statue of Pharaoh Rameses II, “Ozymandias” constituted Shelley’s contribution to a friendly competition with banker-writer Horace Smith. Summary The speaker meets a traveler who has come from an ancient land. The poem reflects on the transitory nature of all things, including empires. The statue is in a state of ruin, but the traveler remembers it as being impressive and intimidating. It features a mysterious traveler who describes a statue of a king, Ozymandias. “Ozymandias” is a 14-line iambic pentameter poem, known as a sonnet, written by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley is about the fall of civilizations. Note that parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken. The version of this poem used to create this study guide appears in: Shelley, Percy Bysshe. ![]()
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