Ozymandias king of kings license#

He had obviously read about it in some other source also since he knew that the statue was no longer intact. Shelley had read of the statue in Diodorus Siculus, a Roman writer, who had described it as intact. Ozymandias was the name by which Ramses II, a pharaoh famous for the number of architectural structures he caused to be erected, was known to the Greeks. The wonders of my hand.' The city's gone!īoth poets remove the city of Thebes, the site of the statue, from their poems for artistic purposes. 'The king of kings this mighty city shows 'I am Great Ozymandias,' saith the stone,

However, to fit the meter it should be only. Stands a gigantic leg, which far off throws Percy Bysshe Shelleys poem Ozymandias is written in iambic pentameter and contains the famous lines My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair I can think of a few different ways that the name Ozymandias could be proncounced, but all of them have five syllables. The superiority of Shelley's choice of details and of the vigor of his diction are splendidly illustrated by a comparison with the octave of his friend's sonnet: 'Ozymandias' was written by Shelley in competition with his friend Horace Smith. Even the gigantic statue of himself that he had commissioned has been reduced to two legs, a shattered face, and a pedestal. The works that were to be the despair of other pharaohs have completely disappeared. Instead of the architectural marvels promised by the inscription, 'the lone and level sands stretch far away.' Just as the sculptor mocked Ozymandias by putting on the face of the colossal monument a 'frown / And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,' so time has also mocked him by reducing his vain boast to nothingness. Now one looks and sees nothing whatsoever. The rulers of the world, 'ye Mighty,' are told by Ozymandias, 'king of kings,' to look upon his works and despair of emulating them.

Shelley puts the words of the inscription in effectively ironic contrast with the surroundings. The fine beginning is followed by a condensed and vigorous account of what the traveler saw in addition to the two huge legs standing in the desert: a shattered visage, a pedestal, and on it a boastful inscription. The story is over and Shelley's point is made before the reader realizes that he has been subjected to a moral lesson. The story is a characteristically Shelleyan one about tyranny and how time makes a mockery of the boastfulness of even the most powerful kings. The mention of a traveler is a promise of a story. Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Ozymandias refers to an Egyptian king in the chronicles of the first-century B.C. Shelley's irregular sonnet on the fragments of a huge statue of an Egyptian pharaoh begins with a statement that arouses the interest of the reader at once: On the pedestal are inscribed the words 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Around the huge fragments stretches the empty desert. The face is distinguished by a frown and a sneer which the sculptor carved on the features. and was famous for his statesmanship, architecture,military leadership, administrative abilities, and building activity. He was an Egyptian pharaoh from 1279-1213 b.c.e. Near them on the sand lies a damaged stone head. The poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysse Shelley was reputedly written about the Egyptian KingRameses 11 Ozymandiaswas his Greek name.

Ozymandias king of kings license#

It’s amazing that the creator was given license to have a line from Ozymandias - an ode to transience - take up residence in a place meant to imply stability and longevity.A traveler tells the poet that two huge stone legs stand in the desert. That initial picture is always amusing, because that little cutout sits in the central government building in Ontario, for Canada. Just remember, it’ll eventually all return to dust. Shelley wrote this to check the arrogant nobles of his time seeking to continuously accumulate wealth, and it’s a good reminder to all of us to always check our drives for legacy - most of us are obsessed with stature, material wealth, ‘leaving a mark’, and take on a great deal of stress in pursuit of this. It’s a founding principle of stoicism (‘ultimately we all die’), and I’m always amused by the romantic treatment of various philosophies, usually to aesthetically stylize the principles presented, to bring them into the ‘romantic’ domain. It’s a welcome reminder that no matter how much we achieve in our lifetimes, all of it will be reduced to dust in time.