Ozymandias By Percy Bysshe Shelley | Full Text Of The Poem
OZYMANDIAS BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY – We are going to read the full text of the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
As mentioned above, it is a poem written by English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. It is a sonnet that was published in the issue of The Examiner of London on January 11, 1818.
The sonnet is also among the year in the poet’s collection entitled Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; with Other Poems.
The name Ozymandias (Ὀσυμανδύας) is a Greek name for an Egyptian pharaoh named Ramases II.
The sonnet is written in lambic pentameter (metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama) but with an atypical rhyme scheme (ABABA CDCEDEFEF pattern).
Here is the full text of the 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!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
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