Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is a sonnet about a king who had hoped that his name would become timeless, and his greatness immortalized.

The work starts off with Shelley taking the form of a traveler from “an antique land” he is the story teller in this case.

"Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. . . . Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,"(ln 1-3)

The wording of the statue is key in this instance. “Two vast and trunkless legs” makes you think that this thing was huge. Trunks gives you the image of these giant tree size legs just shooting out of the ground. The word vast makes you think they are endless, you can’t even see around them. The key word here though is trunkless, the trunks are gone, just like the king. The second part of the passage talks about a sunken face in the sand. The face’s “frown”, “wrinkled lip”, and “sneer of cold command” all tell you that this king was not well liked by his people, or at least not by the sculptor he chose to make this statue. Those features show that this king was power hungry and was driven by the fact that he was the almighty king and no one ruled above him.

"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." (ln 6-8)

Shelley tells us of how Ozymandias’ kingly personality has lived on in the statues features longer than the King’s name and reputation. The king was trying to immortalize his name and greatness, but just like his own mortality, everything is worn away in time.

Shelley ends the sonnet with what is inscribed on the statue’s base.

[“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,]

This quote is extremely ironic, because if you were to walk by it in its current state you would look at it and laugh. I’m looking at your works, they are ruins, a head of a statue and half of some legs. It gives an image of the king yelling out the inscription while his head is half buried into the endless sands where no one can hear him. It reminds me a lot of the black knight in Monty Python, even after he is a stump with no legs or arms he still thinks he is the better. It gives a rather humorous end to a sonnet about a great king who failed in his goal to be immortalized. In the end, time swallows everything, including the great king Ozymandias.