Ozymandias

Ozymandias

Original Text
Bodleian Library MS Shelley e.4, fol. 85r. Facsimile edited by Paul Dawson, The Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, gen. ed. D. H. Reiman (1988). Additional readings from Percy Bysshe Shelley, Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue; with Other Poems (London: C. and J. Ollier, 1819). D-10/3264 Fisher Rare Book Library
2Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
3Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
4Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
7Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
8The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
11Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
13Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
14The lone and level sands stretch far away." --

Notes

1] Shelley evidently wrote this sonnet at Marlow in friendly competition with Horace Smith, whose own sonnet of the same name was published Feb. 1, 1818, also in The Examiner, no. 527, p. 73:
In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
    Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
    The only shadow that the Desart 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, --
    Nought 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 fragments huge, and stops to guess
    What powerful but unrecorded race
    Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

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5] lip Bod. Shelley MS e.4; lips 1819 Back to Line
6] Lines 6-8 pose some difficulty, but "survive" (7) must be a transitive verb whose object is "The hand" and "the heart" (8). The "passions" on Ozymandias' face, that is, survive or live on after both hand and heart. "The hand that mocked them" seems to be the sculptor's hand, delineating the vainglory of his subject in "these lifeless things"; and "the heart that fed" must be Ozymandias' own, feeding on (perhaps) its own arrogance. Kelvin Everest and Geoffrey Matthews suggest that line 8 ends with an ellipsis: "and the heart that fed [them]" (that is, those same passions that are the referent of the pronoun "them" governed by "mocked" (The Poems of Shelley, II: 1817-1819 [London: Pearson, 2000]: 311). Back to Line
9] these words appear: 1819; this legend clear Bodl. Shelley MS e.4. Back to Line
10] Ozymandias: Osymandias, Greek name for the Egyptian king Rameses II (1304-1237 BC). Diodorus Siculus, in his Library of History (trans. C. H. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 303 [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961]: I, 47), records the inscription on the pedestal of his statue (at the Ramesseum, on the other side of the Nile river from Luxor) as "King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works." Back to Line
12] Nothing beside remains: 1819; No thing remains beside. Bodl. Shelley MS. e.4. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1818
Publication Notes
Glirastes, "Ozymandias," The Examiner, no. 524 (Jan. 11, 1818). AP E83 MICR mfm Robarts Library
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire; J. D. Robins
RPO Edition
2RP 2.244; 2002.
Form