The poem's title refers to the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II (13th century B.C.), whose name in ancient Greek was "Ozymandias". Ozymandias opens with a story of the first-person narrator, who describes meeting a traveler "from an antique land" (line 1). The traveler tells a story to the speaker, in which he describes visiting Egypt and seeing a massive statue in the sand. He can tell that the sculptor must have known his subject well ("Tell that its sculptor well those passions read", line 6) because it is clear from the statue's face that this man was a great leader, but also be very vicious: with the expression in line 5, "sneer of cold command", the author reveals the cruel nature of the tyrant. The reader can infer that Ozymandias was a ruthless …show more content…
The statue turns out to be the only thing which has left of the mighty pharaoh. Even though the leader was great, it seems that the only thing that survives from his reign is this statue, which is half buried and about to fall apart. Only the inscription ends up to be the most durable thing among the ruins, acquiring an ironical aspect: the story satirizes the so-called great ruler as nothing great in front of the "level sands" of time (line 14). The tyrant’s arrogant assertions that he is omnipotent and omnipresent have been proved wrong by the flowing of time. Shelley’s poem conveys the idea that nothing is permanent; the entire civilizations are subject to disintegration. The mighty empires ultimately fall into decay and are razed to the ground. The abandoned pieces of the statue are the best evidence for transience of …show more content…
First, there is the speaker of the poem, the lyric I, who meets the traveler "from an antique land" (line 1). From the second line, the speaker steps aside in order to let the traveler tell his story: his voice occupies the rest of the poem. Most of the poem consists of the traveler's description of the statue lying in the desert, except for lines 10 and 11 where he tells what the inscription on the statue says, such as words pronounced by the pharaoh Ozymandias, making him, in a sense, the third speaker in this polyphonic poem. The present speaker retells us the story in the exact words of the original reporter: the whole poem is in the form of a single stretch of direct