Percy bysshe shelley ozymandias summary analysis

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Published in The Examiner on 11 January 1818, ‘Ozymandias’ is perhaps Percy Bysshe Shelley’s most celebrated and best-known poem.

Given its status as a great poem, a few words by way of analysis might help to elucidate some of its features and effects, as well as its meaning – what exactly is Shelley saying about great empires and civilisations?

What follows is our summary and analysis of Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’, our attempt to get to grips with this challenging and haunting poem.

Summary

Because the poem contains several speakers, and an inscription quoted within the speech of one of these speakers, it might be useful to start with a brief summary of ‘Ozymandias’:

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 lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that it