Ozymandias statue
A sketch of these ruins of the statue of Rameses the Great inspired the following sonnets in 1817.
Percy Bysshe Shelley and Horace Smith wrote them in a spirit of friendly competition. Leigh Hunt published both poems in his radical magazine The Examiner — Shelley’s first, on 11 January 1818, and Smith’s on 1 February 1818.


Ozymandias     On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below
 
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

    by Horace Smith

 
         
I met a traveller from an antique land     In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,  
Who said:  “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
         Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
 
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,          The only shadow that the Desert knows.
 
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
    “I am great Ozymandias,” saith the stone,
 
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
5        “The King of kings: this mighty city shows
5
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
    The wonders of my hand.”  The city’s gone!
 
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
         Nought but the leg remaining to disclose
 
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
    The site of that forgotten Babylon.
 
And on the pedestal these words appear:        
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:     We wonder, and some hunter may express  
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! 10   Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
10
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay          Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,
 
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
    He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
 
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”          What wonderful, but unrecorded, race
 

         Once dwelt in that annihilated place.  
         

   
 
Ozymandias — the Greek name for Rameses II (c. 1303-1213 B.C. reigned 1279-1213 B.C.) one of the greatest rulers of ancient Egypt   On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below — Smith orginally titled his poem “Ozymandias,” too, but retitled it when he re-published in later collections.
     
Percy Bysshe Shelley — The Examine named the author as Glirastes. Shelley perhaps chose a pseudonym so as not to influence public opinion and thus exploit an advantage over Smith, as Shelley was more well-known.   Babylon was a city in Mesopotamia, and one of the centers of Sumerian civilization. Smith uses the word as metonymy here, meaning that he does not literally mean Babylon but uses it to signify an ancient and presumably great city.
     
survive — Shelley uses survive as a transitive verb here. That means it takes a direct object, or in this case two: hand and heart. In other words, Shelley is saying that the passions survived or outlived the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.    
     
bare — This is not true. The ruins of the statue are part of a huge complex. However, both Shelley and Smith wrote their sonnets in response to a sketch of the statue, and the man who made the sketch did not bother to put other ruins in the background. As a result, the sketch makes the broken pieces of the statue appear to be the only things around for miles.