Poetry Response 7: "Ozymandias" by Percy Shelley

The narrator meets a traveler who describes a statue that he saw, stating that there were "two vast and trunk less legs of stone."  It seems that this statue was alone and half buried in a sand desert because the traveler describes it as "on the sand, half sunk a shattered visage lies."  The face of the statue is broken and partly buried beneath the sand.  The face is that of a dictator because the lip is turned into a "sneer of cold command."  This may hint that a dictator was overthrown and it has been long since he had been defeated because his statue is covered in sand.  The next line comments that whoever created the sculpture must have understood the passion that the sculpted had felt, "tell that its sculptor well those passions read," because he or she was able to sculpt such an expression.  Through the sculpture the feelings and beliefs of the person who was sculpted continues to live on because it has been made permanent on stone for everyone to see.  The sculpture is an exact replica of the dictator with its mocking gestures, "stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them."

The pedestal on which the sculpture stands on states that he is "Ozymandias, king of kings," proving that the sculpture was of someone who had power over others.  He commands his people to admire him and everything that he has and will do and wants them to fear him, "look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."  But nothing remains except ruins in which the statue now lays which represents how the dictator, after being overthrown, is now living a hard life that has many hills and the level sands are unreachable to him, "the lone and level sands stretch far away."

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.”