And so it is that the story of Ozymandias and the colossus statue is but a metaphor for change, evolution, and the fate and folly of man. Heraclitus, the weeping Greek philosopher seen crying at the foot of the stairs in the iconic Vatican Library School of Athens painting (Raphael 1509–1511), has been said to weep in angst because of life’s constant change and the folly of mankind.

Philosophers have said that one can dip their toe into a moving stream only once, because the stream is constantly changing. Only the pace varies, such as with scientific discovery, and only those things we know about and understand can we know. Evolution is history, and history is constantly evolving. It is important to recall the theme of Ozymandias, written in sonnet style iambic pentameter with an atypical rhyming scheme. Shelley’s poem ended up being published before the statue arrived, and he died shortly thereafter. He was reacting to an announcement by the British Museum that the massive torso and head portion of a colossal Ramesses II statue from 13th century BCE, discovered in 1816 by an Italian explorer in Thebes, was soon to arrive in England. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work.” In Shelley’s poem, Diodorus becomes the “traveler from an antique land” who might have seen the statue. Diodorus noted that perhaps Ozymandias was the Biblical Exodus pharaoh, Rameses II, and suggested that the inscription on the statue (the largest in Egypt at the time) was “King of Kings Ozymandias am I. In an essay dubbing Ozymandias “a poem to outlast empires,” 1 David Mikics noted that Shelley was aware of Diodorus Siculus, a Roman-era historian whose writings describe the Ozymandias statue. Those days seemed indestructible, but in Shelley’s time, the grand and storied empire was long gone and left in sandy ruin. In the aftermath of Napoleon’s Egyptian military victories (1798), many archeologic wonders were found, prompting consideration of the very colorful and remote pharaonic past. Ozymandias grew from a conversation Shelley had with an acquaintance in 1817 while living in Italy.

Although not renowned while alive, he gained fame posthumously and influenced other great poets such as Browning and Yeats. Shelley tragically died in a boating accident at age 29. He also was known for his longer works that included allegorical tales such as Adonais (1821) and Prometheus Unbound (1820), but arguably, he is best remembered for the sonnet Ozymandias. Percy was a major player in that literary scene with shorter works such as Ozymandias (1818), Ode to the West Wind (1819), and To a Skylark (1820), all well-known and studied still in many introductory literature courses. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) and his second wife, Mary Shelley (married 1816 and author of Frankenstein, 1818), are known to many as classic English Romantic period authors.

Ozymandias poem pdf