Rameses II was an Egyptian pharaoh known as Ozymandias who lived from 1279-1213 BCE. A traveler described seeing the remains of a large statue of Ozymandias in the desert, with only two legs and a shattered face remaining. The inscription on the pedestal read "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!", mocking Ozymandias' boastful words, as nothing else remained of his once-great statue and empire but sand and ruins.

2.  Rameses II (an Egyptian pharoah) was known as Ozymandias.
He lived from 1279 to 1213 B.C.E. and was some 96 years old
when he died. He had 200 wives and concubines, with 96 sons
and 60 daughters.
 His statue is at the site of the ancient Egyptian capital, Thebes
(about 420 miles south of Cairo).
 The statue of Ozymandias was originally fifty-seven feet high.
An inscription on it told onlookers, "I am Ozymandias, king of
kings," and challenged them to perform greater works than he
did.

4.  Name : PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
 Born : 04 August 1792 in Horsham,
England.
 Nationality : United Kingdom
 Occupation : Romantic Poet, Dramatist,
Novelist, Essayist.
 Died : 08 July 1822 Gulf of La Spezia,
Kingdom of Sardinia (now Italy).

5.  Written in 1817 during a writing contest against Horace Smith.
 Published in 1818 in the January 11 issue of The Examiner in
London.
 Frequently anthologised and probably Shelley's most famous
short poem.
 Thought to be inspired by the arrival of the statue of “Ramses
II” in Britain.
 A ‘classic’ poem which has been studied and dissected
countless times in the subject of English ever since its
creation.

6. 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 lie, 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.

7.  Iambic pentameter sonnet.
 Theme : The inevitable complete decline of all
leaders, and of the empires they build, however
mighty in their own time.
 Ozymandias was another name for Ramesses the
Great, Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty of
ancient Egypt

8.  The title of the poem informs the reader that the
subject is the 13th-century B.C. Egyptian King Ramses
II, whom the Greeks called “Ozymandias.”
 The speaker in the poem states that he met a traveler
who had been to “an antique land.”- Egypt
 The traveler told him that he had seen a vast but
ruined statue that lay broken and eroded in the desert,
where only the legs remained standing. The face was
sunk in the sand, frowning and sneering.

9.  The traveler describes the great work of the sculptor,
who was able to capture the king’s “passions” and give
meaningful expression to the stone, an otherwise
“lifeless thing.”
 The “mocking hand” in line 8 is that of the sculptor,
who had the artistic ability to “mock” (that is, both
imitate and deride) the passions of the king.
 The “heart” is first of all the king’s, which “fed” the
sculptor’s passions, and in turn the sculptor’s,
sympathetically recapturing the king’s passions in the
stone.

10.  The final five lines mock the inscription hammered
into the pedestal of the statue.
 The original inscription read “I am Ozymandias, King
of Kings; if anyone wishes to know what I am and
where I lie, let him surpass me in some of my
exploits.”
 The idea was that he was too powerful for even the
common king to relate to him; even a mighty king
should despair at matching his power. That principle
may well remain valid, but it is undercut by the plain
fact that even an empire is a human creation that will
one day pass away.

11. The statue and surrounding desert constitute a
metaphor for invented power in the face of
natural power. By Shelley’s time, nothing
remains but a shattered bust, eroded “visage,”
and “trunkless legs” surrounded with
“nothing” but “level sands” that “stretch far
away.” Shelley thus points out human
mortality and the fate of artificial things.

13. The use of Irony Irony is a figure of speech in which
words are used in such a way that their intended
meaning is different from the actual meaning of the
words. It may also be a situation that may end up in
quite a different way than what is generally anticipated.
In simple words, it is a difference between the
appearance and the reality.
Ex. Look upon my works so mighty & despair nothing
beside remains.

14.  MORALMORAL : The moral of the poem ‘Ozymandias’ is that
pride and arrogance can lead to destruction.
Ozymandias was obviously a very proud and arrogant
man. He was vain enough to imagine that he was the
most powerful ruler on Earth and he wanted every one
to be terrified of him. He was always scowling and
frowning in order to scare every one around him. It is
this angry frowning face which the ancient sculpture
has faithfully recorded for posterity in his statue. All
the great ruler try to perpetuate their memories by
building mammoth statues.
 THEMETHEME : The theme is that human beings and
materialistic values are seasonal and are bound to end.