In 1817 P.B SHELLEY visited the British museum where there was an exhibition featuring Egyptian relics, including a huge granite statue of a pharaoh, called Rameses 2. He was inspired to write a poem about his experience. He called the poem ‘OZYMANDIAS’ which is another name for Rameses. It is a sonnet. It made him realise that even the greatest rulers on earth are only on earth temporarily. It made him realise that the greatest civilisations that once ruled the world will fade to dust. It made him realise that the only thing that is permanent is time itself and we as mortals are in the grand scale of things, completely insignificant.
In this poem P.B SHELLEY talks about a meeting with a stranger from an antique, ancient civilisation and most of all a lost civilisation.
“I met a traveller from an antique land”
This line shows us that he is meeting someone from many generations before him. It shows that this person is from old which is shown in the part of the quotation:
“…antique land”
He tells of the seeing of a statue, which is nothing but two legs, a statue which has decayed overtime
“who said: Two vast and trunk less legs of stone
Stand in the desert ….”
This quotation shows how wrong this so called great ruler was because he thought he would make a marker in the worlds history but in time gone by he didn’t. This once great statue now stands in what was once a great civilisation now sand stretching for miles.
“Stand in the desert ….”
This quotation shows how what was once a great statue and civilisation is now a wreck of stone standing alone in the desert with no significance in life.
You can tell by the following quotation how powerful this ruler was
