Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias:” A Romantic’s Obsession with Ruins
by Sophia Zhang
Literature Editor
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.”
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, 11 January 1818
Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of the better-known poets of the Romantic movement, which emerged as the destructive effects of the Industrial Revolution became known. Romantic poets were interested in exploring the natural world and its ravages, emotions and passions, the individual, and the sublime. “Ozymandias is a poem that Shelley composed for a sonnet writing competition. Despite being the most famous poem submitted to the competition, it did not win first place.
The poem is a fourteen-line sonnet that describes the ruins of a statue of Ramesses II, an ancient tyrannical pharaoh often referred to as Ozymandias. The expression sculpted into the figure is cold and dictatorial, with a “sneer of cold command” that has persisted throughout the millennia as the stone has eroded and both the artist and the subject have died. Only the inscription remains while the building is in ruins, which speaks to the ephemeral nature of human achievements, as the words have survived longer than his “works.” The art and the words have transcended history, as Ramesses and the civilization he ruled over are now replaced with the unsettling bareness of the desert, suggesting the transience of human accomplishment. Unlike the statue, which is decaying but still standing, all that this king built no longer exists. Thus, Shelley’s thesis is that nature is all-consuming; nothing will survive. Even the statue that outlived civilization is slowly degrading into dust.
This sonnet is in conversation with Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18,” which is about a boy using the power of words to immortalize his beloved. However, while Shakespeare believes that art has the capability of doing this, Shelley rejects this, believing wholeheartedly in the violence of Nature. Ironically, this sonnet, which is about the ephemerality of the world, including poetry and art, has survived two centuries. While “Ozymandias” is highly skeptical of permanence, reality presents a dichotomy between the strong theme of the poem of the inevitable decay of the man-made and the enduring relevance of the sonnet, as it has defied the rules it has set for itself.