Percy Bysshe Shelley · England · 1818
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 its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and Despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away."
“I met a traveller from an antique land,…”
A traveler told me about something strange they saw in an ancient desert: two enormous stone legs standing alone, no body attached. Nearby, a broken face lay half-buried in sand — still wearing an expression of arrogant authority.
Why this poem matters
Written as a competition with friend Horace Smith, Shelley composed this sonnet inspired by a massive statue of Ramesses II being transported to the British Museum.