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Summary Ozymandias of Egypt IEB Poem
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In depth line by line analysis of Ozymandias of Egypt by Percy Bysshe Shelley for Grade 12 IEB
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Ozymandias of Egypt - Percy Bysshe ShelleyI 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 shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd 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.
, Analysis
In the early 19th century when Percy Bysshe Shelley composed "Ozymandias," European
explorers were rapidly advancing westward across North America, engaging in conflicts
over South America, and beginning to turn their attention towards Africa. The Romantic era
writers found inspiration in this spirit of exploration and adventure, just as their readers
eagerly sought tales of distant lands, people, cultures, and histories. This literary genre
came to be known as 'travel writing' and reached its zenith during the later Victorian era.
Shelley's sonnet, with its exotic title, subject matter, and initial promise of narrating a story
from a foreign land, was well-suited to this prevailing atmosphere. The exotic subject of
Shelley's poem is a colossal statue of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses I, with 'Ozymandias'
being a transliteration of the first part of the pharaoh's throne name as recorded by
ancient Greek and Roman historians. Ramses II, who ruled Egypt three millennia ago, was a
capable and ambitious leader. His numerous military campaigns not only fortified Egypt's
borders but also expanded the boundaries of his empire into neighboring regions such as
Syria and Nubia. In areas where these campaigns were successful, Ramses I commissioned
grand monuments to commemorate his own strength and the might of his empire. The
statue described in the poem is presumably meant to have been the centerpiece of one of
these monuments.
While the statue was ostensibly created to symbolize the pharaoh's power, the poem
transforms it into an ironic emblem of human arrogance and the fleeting nature of political
authority. This transformation is achieved by reversing the statue's intended symbolism. By
depicting the statue's decay over time, the poem reveals that the pharaoh's claims of
unsurpassed strength and dominion are baseless. Although the poem does not explicitly
state it, readers are prompted to infer that this display of power ultimately amounts to
nothing more than a manifestation of the pharaoh's vanity and pride. The poem is
structured as a sonnet, adhering to the format of a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet. It
commences with an octave of eight lines that establish the scene or describe the situation
for the reader (a colossal statue of Ramses I in a vast desert). Subsequently, a sestet of
six lines introduces an unexpected or subversive twist (the inevitable decline of rulers and
their claims to greatness). However, the poem's rhyme scheme departs from conventional
Petrarchan or Shakespearean (English) sonnet conventions. Its irregular rhyme scheme
(ABABACDC EDEFEF) does not follow the rule of having no connection in rhyme between the
octave and the sestet, a departure intended to emphasize the distinction between these
two sections. Throughout the poem, the meter remains consistent with iambic pentameter.
In the poem, the primary narrative consists of
the speaker recounting or transcribing a
conversation they had with an unidentified
'traveller.' The context for this conversation is
established in the poem's first line. In this
opening line, we discover that the traveller hails
from an 'antique land,' implying historical
significance in the place of origin. It is
1. I met a traveller from an antique reasonable to infer, based on the poem's title,
that the traveller has arrived from Egypt, a
land notion reinforced when the traveller describes
their location as a 'desert.' While many readers
might assume that the traveller is a male of
European origin due to their proficient use of
the English language and the prevailing trend of
male European solo travelers during the 1800s,
it's worth noting that this is never explicitly
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