Some poetic background

'Ozymandias' is one of my favorite poems; I find it easily accessible and the imagery very evocative. As you might expect, I've dug into the background a bit. There are some interesting stories behind the poem and I'm going to tell you one or two.

(Gemini)

Here's the background. The poem is the result of a friendly wager between Horace Smith and Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1817. The wager was to write a poem on the theme of an ancient Egyptian monumental sculpture that was then on it's way to Britain. The statue was one of the spoils of war; Britain and France had been fighting for control in Egypt, with Egypt's antiquities one of the great prizes. The Younger Memnon statue was one of these antiquities, and after some adventures, it was successfully looted and brought to London (the French had tried to take it and failed, so it's another of those Anglo-French rivalries). British society had big expectations for the statue, hence the bet to write a poem about the remains of a large statue in a desert. Shelley published his poem in 1818 and 'won' the bet for the better poem.

(Younger Memnon statue - of Rameses II. British Museum. Creative Commons License.)

The titular Ozymandias is the Greek-language version of the name of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II (1279–1213 BCE). During his 60 year reign, Egypt built many cities and temples and successfully waged war against old rivals; scholars regard him as one of the great pharaohs. The Younger Memnon sculpture depicts Ramesses II in his youth. So in 1817, we have a statue of a once-great pharaoh whose empire has crumbed into dust, leaving only statues and ruins behind.

The poem

Here's the entire poem.

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!"
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(Here's a page of literary criticism/analysis of the poem.)

The other entry

Here's Horace Smith's poem on the same theme.

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Naught but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder — and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

I'm not a poetry critic, but even I can see that Shelley's entry is greatly superior.

Best readings

There are many, many of readings of Shelley's poem on the internet. A lot of people like John Gielgud's reading (maybe because he's English and was a classical actor's actor), but for me, Bryan Cranston's reading is the best.

Shelley's life story

Shelley's life story is worth disappearing into a wiki-hole for. It's a lurid tale of political radicalism, lust, and poetry. Even today, some of Shelley's exploits seem wild, and it's easy to see why they would have been shocking two hundred years ago. Of course, it would be remiss of me not to say that Shelley has a hand in the creation of Frankenstein (his wife, Mary Shelley, was the author). Like other great cultural icons, he died young, at 29.