Ozymandias

The poem opens with the speaker meeting an unnamed traveler from an unnamed ancient land. While the scenario suggests an air of timelessness and mystery, it also establishes that this traveler is likely no one special, as the speaker does not think it important to identify them. Ozymandias’s monument is intended for the “mighty” to see and be jealous of, but now its only witnesses are nobodies.

The traveler first describes the most striking features of the statue still standing: two great legs, fixed upright in the sand. While the legs are massive and intimidating, they also lack any identifiable features. They could belong to anyone—likely the opposite of the effect Ozymandias was trying to achieve. The legs are “trunkless” too (Line 2)—this statue could not be reassembled. Time has completely dismantled its “human” body, not unlike the decay that afflicts corpses. At first, we even think the legs might be all that remains of the monument; Shelley bisects Line 3 with a strong pause, suggesting that the traveler saw the legs first, then a long span of sand, before finally spotting the head.

The head is half sunk in the sand, its face—the most identifying and personal feature of the body—“shattered” by time (Line 4). Still, the traveler understands the statue’s expression perfectly well. This, the traveler chalks up not to the power of the pharaoh, but to the skill of the artist who sculpted him. The sculptor knew not only the true nature of his subject; he rendered it perfectly on “lifeless” stone, giving the pharaoh a form of immortality that, ironically, still proved subject to the ravages of time.

In another ironic twist, what was “immortalized” was not the tyrant’s power, but his cold sneer, his ill will, and ultimately, his impotence. Shelley tells us the artist’s hand “mocks” his subject, which carries two meanings. Neutrally, “mock” can simply mean to reproduce (like a mock-up), but its more common, negative sense implies ridicule. The artist may be unknown, but he has a leg up on the “King of Kings”: He makes fun of him (mocks him) by the very act of reproducing him faithfully (also, mocking him), which Ozymandias was too shortsighted to comprehend.

The statue’s pedestal features an almost direct quote from Diodorus’s narrative, now made famous by Shelley’s poem. The pharaoh encourages “ye mighty”—rival kings, perhaps—not only to take in his accomplishments, but also, to be utterly dejected by them. For him, the purpose of labor is not accomplishment, progress, or even improvement. Rather, he is entirely interested in frightening and discouraging others. Ironically, while the artist’s work remains, those of Ozymandias are nowhere to be seen, passively devoured by the desert.

In ending the poem, Shelley foregoes the opportunity to sum up the moral of the story (as his rival Howard Smith does in his much less famous submission, “On a Stupendous Leg of Granite”). Instead, Shelley leaves his reader to draw their own conclusions, ending with the lonely image of an endless desert.