Ozymandias

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

What is the poem about? The narrator meets a traveller who tells him about a statue standing in the middle of the desert. It's a statue of a king who ruled over a past civilisation. His face is proud and he arrogantly boasts about how powerful he is in an inscription on the statue's base. However, the statue has fallen down and crumbled away so that only the ruins remain.

Context: Shelley was a 'romantic' poet- Romanism was a movement that had a big influence on art and literature in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Shelly disliked monarchies, absolute power and the oppression of odinary people. He only became famous after his death. He wrote Ozymandias in 1817, after hearing how an italian explorer had retrieved the statue from the desert.

Form: The poem is a sonnet, with a turning point at line…