Ozymandias by P.B Shelley - Explanation
The poem "Ozymandias" is written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Romantic poet. It describes the power and authority of the time. All living and non-living things have to die or fade away after a certain age. Even an ambitious king such as Ozymandias who boasts of himself as king of all kings can't live forever nor his conquests and creation.
The narrator tells an incident which he was told by a traveller who was a native of a land that has nothing but ancient ruins. The traveller describes a sculpture of a man whose torso portion is removed and can be found in the sand nearby, it is half immersed in the sand. The statue of the carries a cold and angry look on its face and it can be inferred by it that the man upon whom this statue is built was a ruthless and ambitious ruler.
The sculptor captured the actual expression on the ruler's countenance and turned the non-living thing such as stone into the man himself and gave his physical and facial features to it. The masterpiece of the sculptor passed the test of time. The pedestal bears the name of the ruler i.e. Ozymandias who proclaimed himself as the king of all kings and command all to witness his grand and mighty projects which can't be surpassed by anyone. But after time passed then apart from the broken pieces of Ozymandias' sculpture nothing else survives, the sand surrounds the "antique land".
The narrator tells an incident which he was told by a traveller who was a native of a land that has nothing but ancient ruins. The traveller describes a sculpture of a man whose torso portion is removed and can be found in the sand nearby, it is half immersed in the sand. The statue of the carries a cold and angry look on its face and it can be inferred by it that the man upon whom this statue is built was a ruthless and ambitious ruler.
The sculptor captured the actual expression on the ruler's countenance and turned the non-living thing such as stone into the man himself and gave his physical and facial features to it. The masterpiece of the sculptor passed the test of time. The pedestal bears the name of the ruler i.e. Ozymandias who proclaimed himself as the king of all kings and command all to witness his grand and mighty projects which can't be surpassed by anyone. But after time passed then apart from the broken pieces of Ozymandias' sculpture nothing else survives, the sand surrounds the "antique land".