Ozymandias: Important Quotes Explained

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

In lines 3–8, the poem’s main speaker quotes a traveler’s description of a statue that has collapsed into ruins. The traveler’s words draw particular attention to the “shattered visage” of this statue, which has tumbled some distance away from its body and now lies “half sunk” in the sand. By describing the severe expression on this statue’s face, the traveler is also reflecting on the nature of representation. The only reason the traveler has any clue what Ozymandias might have looked like is that a sculptor carved a representation of the real man’s face into stone. The traveler commends the skill of this anonymous artisan when they say “its sculptor well those passions read.” But regardless of the artisan’s skill at depicting a severe expression, it remains unclear how closely the statute resembles Ozymandias the man. The traveler suggests as much when they reference “the hand that mocked them [i.e., those passions].” The hand belongs to the sculptor, who “mocked” the king’s passions in two senses: by imitating them in stone, and perhaps also by deriding them through grotesque exaggeration.

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

In lines 10–11, the traveler quotes the inscription carved into the stone pedestal where the statue of Ozymandias once stood. This quotation is a quote within a quote, since it appears in the context of the traveler’s account, which is itself being quoted by the poem’s main speaker. But the mechanics of this particular quotation are yet more complicated, since the words quoted by the traveler are themselves quoting words Ozymandias supposedly said to his sculptor. These deepening layers of quotation lead to questions about reliability. Did Ozymandias really say those words? Is the traveler’s recollection of the inscription perfect? Does the main speaker remember the traveler’s words verbatim? We can’t possibly know. But despite this general unreliability, it’s clear that the couplet in the inscription has remained intact for more than thirty centuries, suggesting that poetry endures far better than physical monuments. Furthermore, it’s worth noting that the first line in the couplet ever so slightly exceeds iambic pentameter due to the length of Ozymandias’s name. This metrical excess references how the ancient Egyptian king aspired to have his outsized reputation last far beyond his own lifetime.

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The poem closes with these lines (12–14), still in the voice of the traveler, quoted by the main speaker. This passage immediately follows the quoted inscription in which Ozymandias announces his name and boasts of his great achievements. In contrast to the egotism encompassed in those lines, the pointedness of the three-word sentence, “Nothing beside remains,” is particularly powerful. Here, the point of view expands out from the statue’s scattered ruins, revealing its location in the midst of a barren wasteland. The “boundless and bare” desert that stretches as far as the eye can see in every direction obviously conjures an image of vast space. Counterintuitively, however, the desert symbolizes the vastness of time.
More than thirty centuries stand between the historical reign of Ozymandias and the time of Shelley’s writing. Over the course of those thirty centuries, dry desert winds have slowly but surely eroded the statue and reduced it to “the lone and level sands.” In the vastness of time, nothing truly lasts. As such, Ozymandias’s grand ambitions, manifested in great stone monuments like this statue, have all but crumbled to dust.