Ozymandias

The poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley is about a traveler telling the speaker about a statue in the desert. This statue is half sunk in the sand and the traveler explains that the “sneer of cold command” (1720, 5) on the statue’s face indicates that the sculptor understood the passions of the statue’s subject. This man sneered at those who were not as powerful as him, but he fed his people because of something in his heart. The Traveler goes on to say that on the pedestal of the statue, it is written, “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” (1720,10-11) But when you look all around the statue for these “works” there is nothing but sand and a bare desert.

Ozymandias is a sonnet, a fourteen lined poem metered in iambic pentameter. It is not divided into stanzas or paragraphs. The rhyme scheme does not fit a usual Petrarchan pattern, but instead it seems to connect the first eight lines with the last six lines by gradua...