Ozymandias
The name
Ozymandias (or
Osymandias) is generally believed to refer to Ramses the Great (i.e.,
Ramses II) of
Egypt.
Osymandias represents a transliteration into
Greek of a part of Ramses's throne name,
User-maat-re Setep-en-re.
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Ozymandias\nI met a traveller from an antique land,
\nWho said — "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
\nStand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
\nHalf sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
\nAnd wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
\nTell that its sculptor well those passions read
\n Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
\nThe hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
\nAnd on the pedestal these words appear:
\nMy name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
\nLook on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
\nNothing beside remains. Round the decay
\nOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
\nThe lone and level sands stretch far away." —\n|}
Ramses is the subject of a famous sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).
The sonnet paraphrases the inscription on the base of the statue,\ngiven by Diodorus Siculus as \n"King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works" (quoted by [1]).
The impact of the sonnet's message comes from its double irony. The tyrant declares, "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Yet nothing remains of Ozymandias' works but the shattered fragments of his statue. So "the mighty" should despair not as Ozymandias intended, but because they will share his fate of inevitable oblivion in the sands of time.
Shelley apparently wrote this sonnet in competition with his friend Horace Smith, as Smith published a sonnet a month after Shelley's which takes the same subject and makes the same moral point.
This short poem, probably Shelley's most famous due to its frequent appearance in anthologies, combines a number of great themes -- the arrogance and transience of power, the permanence of real art and emotional truth, the contradictory and critical character of the relationship between artist and subject -- with striking imagery, a setting that merges exotic distance (Egypt, Ozymandias, the desert) with the more familiar and topical (Napoleon, a European, presumably English, traveller/commentator), and virtuoso diction. A miniature masterpiece, it is as monumental as the best poems of Horace or Pushkin.
\n
Sources
\n:Reiman, Donald H. and Sharon B. Powers Shelley's Poetry and Prose. Norton, 1977.
External links
\n* Ramesses the Great (general information about Ramses)\n*
Horace Smith's poem of the same name, and of the same themes
Category:Poems
