The intrepid explorer has encountered vast and trunkless legs of the vestiges of a statue in disrepair whose head lay as a near. The remaining thirteen lines of the poem quote verbatim the tale that the traveler has borne from his trek into the desert. The reader knows neither the identity of the traveler nor the circumstances wherein the poet has encountered the traveler but may assume he is a source of information about a strange and unfamiliar world. The narrator of introduces a conversation he has chanced to have with a from an antique in line 1. The poem is conventionally written in iambic pentameter (that is, ten syllables per line of coupled unstressed then stressed sounds), so the subject matter is framed both the structural and metrical constraints chosen the poet. The poem follows the traditional structure of the Italian sonnet, featuring an opening octave, or set of eight lines, that presents a conflict or dilemma, followed a sestet, or set of six lines, that offers some resolution or commentary upon the proposition introduced in the octave. The poem remains primarily an ironic and compelling critique of Ozymandias and other rulers like him, but it is also a striking meditation on humanity: the traveler in the ancient land, the who fashioned the tomb, and the reader of the poem, no less than Ozymandias, inhabit a world that is and Summary is a sonnet composed the Romantic poet Percy sshe Shelley and named for its subject, with the Greek name of the Egyptian king Ramses II, who died in 1234 b.c. There is a special justice in the way tyrants are subject to time, but all humans face death and decay. The irony of cuts much deeper as the reader realizes that the forces of mortality and mutability, described brilliantly in the concluding lines, will erode and destroy all our lives. sonnet, however, would not be the great poem it surely is if it were only a bit of political satire. The vaunting words carved into the stone pedestal can still be read: on my works, ye Mighty, and Yet he is to be pitied, if not disdained, rather than held in awe and fear: The tomb is set in a vast wasteland of sand, perhaps way of suggesting that all tyrants ultimately end up in the only kind of kingdom they deserve, a barren desert. The face of Ozymandias is still recognizable, but it is and, though his of cold persists, it is obvious that he no longer commands anyone or anything. Enough of the original monument exists to allow Shelley a moment of triumph over the thwarted plans of the ruler. The king evidently commissioned a sculptor to create an enormous sphinx to represent his enduring power, but the traveler comes across only a broken heap of stones ravaged time. Shelley emphasizes that to a modern viewer this tomb tells quite a different tale than that which Ozymandias had hoped it would. Introduction The narrator presents the reader with a stunning vision of the tomb of Ozymandias, another name for Ramses II, King of Egypt during the 13th century B.
The sight of these ruins leads the traveler to conclude that everyone dies and that one day everything will succumb to the desert and the dust. An inscription on the tomb even reads: name is Ozymandias, king of Look on my works, ye Mighty, and Unfortunately, not what the traveler felt when he saw it.
Ozymandias clearly intended this tomb and its sphinx to immortalize him. The dialogue begins in line two and continues until the end of the sonnet. The speaker meets a traveler who tells him about tomb. This tomb was intended to memorialize greatness, but instead paints a sad picture of death and decay in a barren desert. Preview text Ozymandias Summary In Shelley describes the ruins of the once great tomb of Ramses II, also known as Ozymandias.