Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a fourteen-line poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley with an iambic pentameter, also known as a sonnet. It is about the inevitable decline of mighty leaders. It promotes the idea that there is no such thing as eternal reign of leaders and the empires they built. The speaker of this poem claims that he met a traveler who came from an antique land. The traveler told him that he saw a ruined statue with only the legs standing. Its’ face was sunk in the sand, showing his wrinkled lip and ‘sneer of cold command’. The sculptor succeeded in interpreting the subject. There was also a pedestal on the statue with words written which states that the statue was of “Ozymandias, King of Kings”. Despite the writings on the pedestal about how mighty and great the king is, the whole are was just covered with flat sand. All that remained was the wrecked statue.

There are a few repetitions found in this beautiful poem by Shelley. The repetition of the idea that nothing lasts forever are shown in the choice of words in the poem. In lines 2, 3 and 4 it was described that the statue of the king was ruined and the only pieces remaining were two vast and trunkless legs of stone and the face of the king which was half sunk on the sand. Here the author had made it clear that the statue was a wreck. Then, on the last 3 lines the idea that nothing lasts forever is supported by these lines: /Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/ Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,/The lone and levels sands stretch far away”/. Those three last lines emphasizes that in the end, everything will vanish.

This sonnet centralizes on a theme of Immortality vs Mortality, emphasizing on the inevitable decline of every leader no matter how great or powerful they are. Every single human being, including powerful leaders will have to die in their lifetime no matter how much power they have in their hands and how great their works are. The statue of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II, or Ozymandias itself symbolizes political tyranny. In the poem, it was stated that the statue was ruined and broken into pieces in an empty desert, which gives the idea that tyranny is temporary and also suggesting that no political leader can have an immortality in their reign and power because they are just human beings. The wrecked statue also symbolizes the decay of civilization and culture. The statue was created by the hands of human, and eventually the statue and the creator has both been destroyed because the truth is that all living things are going to be destroyed in the end. In the poem, the lines 10-11, /’My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:/Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’/ basically shows that the ruler Ozymandias is trying to tell people his awesomeness and his power to everyone who might pass by. However, there is no proof of