The poem Ozymandias is a satiric poem intended to convey the message that power and pride are vain and temporary possessions that make human beings arrogant and egotistical but time will treat everything and everyone equally. The situation of the poem is one in which the speaker is narrating to us what a "traveler from an antique land" had told him.
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The traveler had described a broken statue of an ancient tyrant to this speaker. The present speaker retells us the story in the exact words of the original reporter: the whole poem is in the form of a single stretch of direct speech. The story quietly satirizes the so-called great ruler as nothing great in front of the "level sands" of time.
The poem develops only logically as the writer turns and twists the narration, satirizing the tyrant, specifically, and also suggesting the general theme of the vanity of power and pride. As the traveler had told this speaker, there were two "vast and trunkless legs of stone" in the midst of a desert. As the other details clearly reveal, the legs belonged to a statue of some ancient tyrant who had an empire with its capital at this place. Here was one of his enormous statues under which he had ordered the artist to write the words:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings... Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair".
This suggests that the tyrant used to take it for granted that his name would be immortal in an everlasting empire of his, and therefore, the people would look at the statue and his "works" - whatever it means - and 'despair' out of awe, amazement and fear.
In the letters carved on the pedestal, he has also addressed to "ye Mighty", meaning 'powerful' kings of the future; all of whom he had supposed would be much inferior to him. But the traveler looked around and saw nothing other than an endless stretch of sand, nothing of the "my works" at which even the mighty was supposed to look and despair!
In the course of the development of the narration of the strange story, the traveler's speech is handled in such a way as to suggest many other points of satire and other messages. The way the traveler has described the shattered statue and the surrounding must be discussed in some detail in order to unravel some of the major thematic ideas in the poem. Near the trunkless pair of legs, there was a broken face with a frown on it.
This and the wrinkled lip showed the "sneer of cold command" to the traveler. It seems that the sculptor knowingly represented these features on the face to tell the future generations how cruel and inhuman this tyrant was.
These indicators have survived longer than the empire and even the whole form of the stone statue. Evil name does outlive one's life or kingdom. The maker of the statue understood the meaning of the artificial facial expression that the tyrant puts on in order to arouse fear in the people.
He must have also read the wickedness and cruelty on his face. The (hand of the) artist mocked the egomania of the conceited tyrant, because he understood the reality of life, being not blinded by power and possession. He put his heart to make the statue, representing perfectly not only what the tyrant must have told him to but also a truth
In the octave or first eight lines,the speaker introduces the traveller who narrates the broken statue, its sur- rounding and the impression reflected on the shattered face of it.In the sestet or last six lines, the traveller quotes the inscription on the pedestal. The inscription says that the statue is of Ozymandias who was the king of kings.
He was more powerful than other kings were, and so, he was proud of his power. But with the passage of time this symbol of autocratic authority turned into a huge heap of ruins, lying pitifully in a lonely vast desert. This part ends with a comment on the meaninglessness of human power. The octave, thus, introduces the subject and the sestet concludes it with a reflection on the theme, the futility of human power on earth.
THE POEM WAS WRITTEN BY: Percy bysshe shelley
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