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Percy
Bysshe Shelley (17921822)
Ozymandias 18171818
MS Shelley e. 4 fol. 85 r
© Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
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Percy
Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias
18171818
Ozymandias
is one of Percy Bysshe Shelley's most famous sonnets,
and was first printed in January 1818. The manuscript
has a draft on the reverse stating: 'My name is
OzymandiasKing of Kings.' This boast is
a classical quotation from the account by Diodorus
Siculus of the Theban monuments of Rameses II,
which had been quoted in a number of travel books
of the time. The sonnet was written when the fashion
for Egyptology was at its height, and the British
Museum was actively collecting monuments from
Ancient Egypt. It has also been suggested that
the reference to the tyrant's 'vast and trunkless
legs' echoed Shelley's own obsession with the
condition 'elephantiasis'. Much of Shelley's poetry
reveals his abiding belief in the power of human
love and reason, and faith in the perfectibility
and ultimate progress of man. His lyric poems
are superb in their beauty, grandeur and mastery
of language, all attributes exemplified by Ozymandias:
"I
met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, atamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, this legend clear:
My
name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing remains beside. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
This
version of the text (showing slight variants against
modern editions) is taken from the autograph fair
copy displayed. The leaf, with the germ of the
poem drafted on its other side, comes from one
of Shelley's notebooks.
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