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.”
“Ozymandias” Summary
The speaker of the poem meets a traveller who came from an
ancient land. The traveller describes two large stone legs of a statue,
which lack a torso to connect them, and stand upright in the
desert. Near the legs, half buried in sand, is the broken face of the
statue. The statue's facial expression—a frown and a wrinkled lip—
form a commanding, sneer. The expression shows that the sculptor
understood the emotions of the person the statue is based on, and
now those emotions live on, carved forever on inanimate stone. In
making the face, the sculptor’s skilled hands mocked up a perfect
recreation of those feelings and of the heart that fed those feelings
(and, in the process, so perfectly conveyed the subject’s cruelty that
the statue itself seems to be mocking its subject).The traveller next
describes the words inscribed on the pedestal of the statue, which
say: "My name is Ozymandias, the King who rules over even other
Kings. Behold what I have built, all you who think of yourselves as
powerful, and despair at the magnificence and superiority of my
accomplishments." There is nothing else in the area. Surrounding the
remnants of the large statue is a never-ending and barren desert,
with empty and flat sands stretching into the distance.

o The Transience of Power
One of Shelley’s most famous works, “Ozymandias”
describes the ruins of an ancient king’s statue in a foreign
desert. All that remains of the statue are two “vast” stone
legs standing upright and a head half-buried in sand, along
with a boastful inscription describing the ruler as the “king
of kings” whose mighty achievements invoke awe and
despair in all who behold them. The inscription stands
in ironic contrast to the decrepit reality of the statue,
however, underscoring the ultimate transience of political
power. The poem critiques such power through its
suggestion that both great rulers and their kingdoms will fall
to the sands of time.
In the poem, the speaker relates a story a traveler told him
about the ruins of a “colossal wreck” of a sculpture whose
decaying physical state mirrors the dissolution of its
subject’s—Ozymandias’s—power. Only two upright legs, a
face, and a pedestal remain of Ozymandias’s original statue,
and even these individual parts of the statue are not in great
shape: the face, for instance, is “shattered." Clearly, time
hasn’t been kind to this statue, whose pitiful state undercuts
the bold assertion of its inscription. The fact that even this
“king of kings” lies decaying in a distant desert suggests that
no amount of power can withstand the merciless and
unceasing passage of time.
The speaker goes on to explain that time not only destroyed
this statue, it also essentially erased the entire kingdom the
statue was built to overlook. The speaker immediately
follows the king’s declaration found on the pedestal of the
statue—“Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”—
with the line “Nothing beside remains.” Such a savage
contradiction makes the king’s prideful dare almost
comically naïve. Ozymandias had believed that while he
himself would die, he would leave a lasting and intimidating
legacy through everything he built. Yet his words are
ultimately empty, as everything he built has crumbled. The
people and places he ruled over are gone, leaving only an
abandoned desert whose “lone and level sands” imply that
not even a trace of the kingdom’s former glory can be
discerned. The pedestal’s claim that onlookers should
despair at Ozymandias’s works thus takes on a new and
ironic meaning: one despairs not at Ozymandias’s power,
but at how powerless time and decay make everyone.
The speaker also uses the specific example of Ozymandias to
make a broader pronouncement about the ephemeral
nature of power and, in turn, to implicitly critique tyranny.
The speaker evokes the image of a cruel leader; Ozymandias
wears a “frown” along with the “sneer of cold command."
That such “passions” are now recorded only on “lifeless
things” (i.e., the statue) is a clear rebuke of such a ruler, and
 suggests that the speaker believes such tyranny now only
exists on the face of a dead and crumbling piece of stone.
The poem's depiction of the destruction of Ozymandias and
his tyranny isn’t entirely fictional: Ozymandias is the Greek
name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II, who dramatically
expanded Egypt’s empire and who had several statues of
himself built throughout Egypt. In fact, the Ancient Greek
writer Diodorus Siculus reported the following inscription on
the base of one of Ozymandias’s statues: "King of Kings am I,
Ozymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and
where I lie, let him surpass one of my works." By alluding to
an actual ancient empire, and an actual king, the poem
reminds readers that history is full of the rises and falls of
empires. No power is permanent, regardless of how
omnipotent a ruler believes himself to be. Even the “king of
kings” may one day be a forgotten relic of an “antique land.”

The Power of Art

Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias” famously describes a ruined
statue of an ancient king in an empty desert. Although the
king’s statue boastfully commands onlookers to “Look on my
Works, ye Mighty, and despair,” there are no works left to
examine: the king’s cities, empire, and power have all
disappeared over time. Yet even as the poem insists that
“nothing beside” the shattered statue and its pedestal
remains, there is one thing that actually has withstood the
centuries: art. The skillful rendering of the statue itself and
the words carved alongside it have survived long after
Ozymandias and his kingdom turned to dust, and through
this Shelley’s poem positions art as perhaps the most
enduring tool in preserving humanity’s legacy.
Although the statue is a “wreck” in a state of “decay,” its
individual pieces show the skill of the sculptor and preserve
the story of Ozymandias. The face is “shattered,” leaving
only a mouth and nose above the desert sand, but the
“frown,” “wrinkled lip,” and “sneer” clearly show
Ozymandias’s “passions” (that is, his pride, tyranny, and
disdain for others). The fragments interpret and preserve
the king’s personality and show onlookers throughout
history what sort of a man and leader Ozymandias truly was.
These fragments, then, are examples of art’s unique ability
to capture and relate an individual’s character even after
their death. In fact, the poem explicitly emphasizes art’s
ability to bring personalities to life: the speaker explains that
Ozymandias’s “passions” “yet survive” on the broken statue
despite being carved on “lifeless” stone. Ozymandias may be
dead, yet, thanks to the sculptor who “read” those
“passions” and “mocked,” or made an artistic reproduction
of them, his personality and emotions live.
In addition to highlighting the sculptor’s artistic skill,
Shelley’s poem also elevates the act of writing through its
focus on the inscription of the statue’s pedestal. The
pedestal preserves Ozymandias’ identity even more
explicitly than the statue itself. The inscription reveals his
name, his status as royalty (“King of Kings”), and his
command for “Mighty” onlookers to “despair” at his
superiority and strength. His words are thus a lasting
testament to his hubris, yet it is notably only the words
themselves—rather than the threat behind them—that
survive. Without this inscription, none would know
Ozymandias’s name nor the irony of his final proclamation.
In other words, his legacy and its failure only exist because a
work of art—specifically, a written work—preserved them.
The poem therefore suggests art as a means to immortality;
while everything else disappears, art, even when broken and
half-buried in sand, can carry humanity’s legacy.
This power of art is reflected by the composition of the
poem itself. Shelley was aware that the ancient Greek writer
Diodorus Siculus had described a statue of the Egyptian
pharaoh Ramses II and had transcribed the inscription on its
pedestal as "King of Kings am I, Ozymandias. If anyone
would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass
one of my works." Shelley’s poem exists solely because of
Siculus’s description: Shelley and his friend and fellow writer
Horace Smith had challenged each other to a friendly
competition over who could write the best poem inspired by
Siculus's description. This poem was Shelley’s entry, and it
became by far the more famous of the two. Like Siculus’
description of the statue, this poem keeps Ozymandias’s
story and words alive for subsequent generations. The very
composition of this poem, then, dramatizes the power of
art: art can preserve people, objects, cities, and empires,
 giving them a sort of immortality, and letting future
generations “look on [past] works” not with despair, but
with wonder.

o Man Versus Nature

As a Romantic poet, Shelley was deeply respectful of nature

and skeptical of humanity’s attempts to dominate it.
Fittingly, his “Ozymandias” is not simply a warning about the
transience of political power, but also an assertion of
humanity’s impotence compared to the natural world. The
statue the poem describes has very likely become a “colossal
Wreck” precisely because of the relentless forces of sand
and wind erosion in the desert. This combined with the fact
that “lone and level sands” have taken over everything that
once surrounded the statue suggests nature as an
unstoppable force to which human beings are ultimately
subservient.
Shelley’s imagery suggests a natural world whose might is
far greater than that of humankind. The statue is notably
found in a desert, a landscape hostile towards life. That the
statue is “trunkless” suggests sandstorms eroded the torso
or buried it entirely, while the face being “shattered” implies
humanity’s relative weakness: even the destruction of a
hulking piece of stone is nothing for nature. The fact that the
remains of the statute are “half sunk” under the sand,
meanwhile, evokes a kind of burial. In fact, the statement
“nothing beside remains” can be read as casting the
fragments of the statue as the “remains” of a corpse. The
 encroaching sand described in the poem suggests that
nature has steadily overtaken a once great civilization and
buried it, just as nature will one day reclaim everything
humanity has built, and every individual human as well.
The desert, not Ozymandias, is thus the most powerful
tyrant in Shelley’s poem. It is “boundless” and “stretch[es]
far away” as though it has conquered everything the eye can
see, just as it has conquered Ozymandias’s statue.
Ozymandias may be the king of kings, but even kings can be
toppled by mere grains of sand.

Ozymandias: Line by line explanation

“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies,
The traveller told the narrator that he saw two huge stone-legs of
a statue in the middle of a desert. ‘Trunkless’ suggests that the
legs were standing there without the upper body or the torso. The
desert indicates that it was ancient Egypt. Near the standing legs
he also came across the broken head (shattered visage) of the
statue that was partially buried in the sand. visage means a face;
but it implies a head here.
The shattered head denotes that the whole statue is destroyed.
But we don’t really know what exactly happened to that statue. It’s
perhaps just the natural process of decay with time.

…whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
The traveller goes on to describe that the face of the statue lying
on the sand had the expressions still visible and identifiable of the
mighty ruler Ozymandias. He has used ‘frown’, ‘wrinkled up’ and
‘sneer of cold command’ to give us an impression that the subject
of the statue was an angry, commanding and often upset man.But
the next line shifts the attention from the statue to the sculptor
who created it. The traveller admires that the artist understood
and felt (read) his subject’s (the man in the statue) passions and
emotions very well. That is why he could draw the face so
perfectly that it is still visible.

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
The man continues his praise for the sculptor. The words ‘which
yet survive’ implies the immortality of a work of art that the artist
created. His creation is still alive (stamped) on the otherwise
lifeless stones. The sculptor’s hands copied and portrayed
(mocked) his subject’s passions and his heart felt those and
inspired (fed) to make it possible. So, that hand and that heart ‘yet
survive’ through this masterful creation.

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Now, again the poem shifts to the statue. The traveller quotes the
words written on its pedestal. The inscription declares the name
of the man. It’s Ozymandias. He also regarded himself as the
‘King of Kings’. The ruler addresses others who think themselves
powerful (Mighty) to look at his works to get their illusion shattered
(despair). As you already know from the above section that this
was the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, the ‘works’ might
indicate to the famous temples and statues he built.

Here Ozymandias is giving a warning to the other kings and rulers

not to hope for much greatness, as they can never cross his
achievements. That certainly gives an impression of his proud
and commanding nature. But ironical enough, his own statue is
now grounded by the great force of nature.

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
And here comes the final words from the traveller on how there is
nothing except those ruins and the sands all around. ‘The
colossal Wreck’ hints at how the gigantic statue and the high-
flying passions attached to it are all dusted now. The ‘boundless
and bare’ and the ‘lone and level’ sands stretching far away
symbolizes the vastness of time.

We the human beings are very little creatures in the vast passage
of time. Our pride and might will eventually disappear. But what
remains immortal is the work of art. These last lines suggest the
central theme of the sonnet
The speaker of the poem once met a traveler from ‘an antique land’. So,
the traveller was from a place with an ancient history like Rome, Greece
or ancient Egypt. The traveller told him his story of the ruins of a giant
statue that he had come across.

So, it’s a story within a story, a narrative within a narrative. Some

critics opine that this framing has helped the poet add another
level of obscurity to Ozymandias’s position in people’s mind. It is
suggestive of how pride and glory of power fade away with time.