Describe The Poem "Ozymandias" By Shelley.

This poem shows the passing of human pomp and power. It tells that glory and greatness, pelf and poor all are the slaves of death. The statue of "The King of Kings" is now broken and neglected. But it bears witness to the futile attempt of man to keep alive the memory of his greatness. He forgets that the hammers of the builder are always succeeded by the hammers of decay and destruction.

Once the poet met a traveller who was returning from the ancient land of Egypt. The traveller told the poet of a broken statue that he had seen in desert. The statue was of an old Egyptian King, Ozymandias. It was now in a dilapidated condition.
Only the big and trunk less legs of the statue were standing. The head was broken and was lying near half sunken in sand.

The sculptor had very successfully showed the haughty looks of the King. On the pedestal was an inscription that showed his pride and vanity. But the head of the King that used to wear a crown was now lying alone. There could be seen nothing around it except the vast desert.

The poem shows Shelley's scorn and hatred for the despots. Shelley was a great revolutionary poet. He was deadly against oppression and suppression. He wanted to break all chains of social and political slavery so that man might regain his natural grace and dignity. A critic says that liberty of the down-trodden and hope for the expression are the things that fire his songs.

What reason can you give for the poets invention of the traveller rather than telling us about this experiannce as if it had been his own?

This poem starts with a traveller(from a antique land) meeting the poet and saying about a statue in the middle of the desert.the traveller may be from that antique land or just a tourist sharin about his experience.the traveller further describes about the statue saying that the two long legs standing without its upper half.he says that near the ststue a face half sunk in the sand lied.the lines "wrinkled lip,and sneer of cold command"describes the authoriting character of the king who himself may have been tortoured the sculpturer of this statue(asking him to make the statue).this also shows the artistic skills of the sulpturer.the most confusing sentence of the poem is "the hand that mocked them,and the heart that fed them" even many philosophers could not find the exact meaning of this poem.on the pedestal the words are written"my name is ozymandias,king of kings".this refers to one of the king of greek.

The writers email ID is : [email protected] more doubt about this poem or any other poem  send about your doubt in this ID and get immediate reply.

The central theme of "Ozymandias" is the inevitable decline of all
people, and of the empires they build, however mighty in their own time.

The 'Younger Memnon' statue of Ramesses II in the British Museum thought to have inspired the poem

Ozymandias was another name for Ramesses the Great, Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt.^[4] Ozymandias represents a transliteration into Greek of a part of Ramesses' throne name, User-maat-re Setep-en-re. The sonnet paraphrases the inscription on the base of the statue, given by Diodorus Siculus as "King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works."^[5]Shelley's poem is often said to have been inspired by the arrival in
London of a colossal statue of Ramesses II, acquired for the British Museum by the Italian adventurer Giovanni Belzoni in 1816.^[6] Rodenbeck and Chaney, however,^[7]point out that the poem was written and published before the statue
arrived in Britain, and thus that Shelley could not have seen it. Its
repute in Western Europe preceded its actual arrival in Britain
(Napoleon had previously made an unsuccessful attempt to acquire it for
France, for example), and thus it may have been its repute or news of
its imminent arrival rather than seeing the statue itself which
provided the inspiration.
Among the earlier senses of the verb "to mock" is "to fashion an imitation of reality" (as in "a mock-up"),^[8] but by Shelley's day the current sense "to ridicule" (especially by mimicking) had come to the fore.
The sonnet celebrates the anonymous sculptor and his artistic
achievement, whilst Shelley imaginatively surveys the ruins of a bygone
power to fashion a sinuous, compact sonnet spun from a traveller's tale
of far distant desert ruins. The lone and level sands stretching to the horizon perhaps suggest a resultant barrenness from a misuse of power where "nothing beside remains".

According to a first-century B.C. Greek historian, the largest statue in Egypt was inscribed: "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." Ozymandias was the Greek name for Ramses II, a 13th-century B.C. pharoah and the greatest monument builder of them all.Shelley took both of these facts and created one of the most chilling andsuccint comments in English poetry on the brevity of fame and mighty deeds.

Ozymanidias' "cold sneer" on his visage half sunk in the endless sands speaks through the centuries of his greatness. But the irony is, for all of its tributes, the symbol has become meaningless.Shelley captures the folly of all human endeavour, even that of kings. Our lives are but "a colossal Wreck" -- even those of the mightiest kings -- about which "the lone and level sands [of time] stretch far away." In other words%

Ozymandias is considered as the most famous sonnet of P.B. Shelly. It is a unique form of a sonnet and depicts a powerful imagery and theme. It was published in the year 1818 in competition with a poem with the same title written by Horace Smith who was a friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
It was basically written for a writing contest and the name of this poem is one the name of a Pharaoh called Ozymandias - Ramesses the Great.
This poem is about the the rise and fall of Ozymandias Pharaoh and also about the rise and fall of the entire Egyptian civilization. The poet just wants to convey that everything is going to perish no matter how great or how small it is.