“Ozymandias” (1818) by Percy Shelley is our Poem of the Week. After last week’s “The Second Coming” by Yeats, we continue with another apocalyptic poem with desert imagery.
The entire poem runs a mere 14 lines and can be read here. The backstory of the poem begins with a real-life event, the discovery in the Egyptian desert of the ruins of an ancient colossal statue, The Younger Memnon.
The statue is estimated to be about 3,300 years old and depicts the Egyptian pharaoh Ramsses II (the Great). Ozymandias is the ancient Greek rendering of the King’s name.
Napoleon tried to have the statue excavated in 1798, but the British succeeded in 1815. The poem commemorates the transportation of the statue to England, where it still resides, on display in the British Museum in London.
The 1818 poem was the result of a friendly competition between Shelly and his rival Horace Smith, who produced his own poem on a similar theme.
Both poems touch on the theme of how even the greatest of fame is fleeting and all will inevitably be lost to the sands of time. Both poets note the statue’s inscription, rendered by Shelley as,
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Shelley closes with three final lines,
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Although his work endures, Shelley, the man himself, was lost in a storm at sea, in 1822, at the age of 29.
