Poem Review: Ozymandias

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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.”

Ozymandias is an interesting poem that tells us nothing lasts forever. It tells the story of a narrator who talks to a traveller who returned from a land far away. The traveler tells the narrator of their adventures in the desert, especially an encounter with a statue of the former king: Ozymandias. Ozymandias proclaimed himself “King of Kings” and once ruled the land. Yet all that’s left of his might and power is a broken statue in the desert. The statue captures Ozymandias’s temperament, his “wrinkled lip” and “sneer of cold command”. Ozymandias thought he could be immortal by leaving a statue of himself for posterity, yet time stops for no one. Ozymandias is long gone and his statue is broken in pieces covered with sand.

The lesson is not complicated: forget legacy and do what you enjoy; do things not for any external validation but for yourself. In the end, no one will remember you or I across the vast expanse of time anyway.