Ozymandias

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Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here. Check out our "How to Read a Poem" section for a glossary of terms.

Statues and Sculpting

Because the poem is inspired by a statue of Ramses II, we shouldn't be surprised to find so many references to this statue and to sculpting more generally. The "colossal" size of the statue is a symbol of Ramses's lofty self-promotion royal ambition. But statues and sculpture aren't all bad in this poem; they are also a vehicle for the poet to explore questions about the longevity of art, and its ability to capture "passions" (6) in a "lifeless" (7) medium like stones (or painting or even poetry).

• Line 2: The traveler describes two "legs of stone" with no torso, our first indication that the statue is partly destroyed.
• Line 4: The head of the statue is "shatter'd" and partially buried in the sand. "Visage" is a stand-in for the statue's head. (The use of one part of any object or entity to describe the whole is called synecdoche.)
• Line 6-7: The sculptor was pretty good at representing Ramses's "passions" in the statue, which are "stamp'd" or engraved in stone. Even though the stones are "lifeless," they paradoxically give life to the "passions" that still "survive." There are three words in these two lines that start with "s"; the use of multiple words starting with the same letter is called alliteration.
• Line 8: The "hand that mock'd" is another reference to the sculptor and the work of imitation he performs. "Hand" is another example of synecdoche, in which a part (the hand) stands in for the whole (the sculptor).
• Line 9: Describes the base of the statue and the boast engraved on it.
• Line 11: The inscription refers to "works," which might be a reference to other statues, works of art, or monuments commissioned by Ozymandias. This line is ambiguous; Ozymandias could be telling the mighty to despair because their works will never be as good as his or he could be telling them to despair because their works will all eventually crumble just like his. Ozymandias clearly doesn't intend this second meaning, but it's there whether he wants it or not. That's called dramatic irony.
• Line 13: The poem again reminds us that there is a huge statue in the desert that is now a "colossal wreck."

Destruction

The statue that inspired the poem was partially destroyed, and the poem frequently reminds us that the statue is in ruins. The dilapidated state of the statue symbolizes not only the erosive processes of time, but also the transience of political leaders and regimes.

• Line 2: The "legs" of the statue don't have a torso ("trunkless").
• Line 4: The statue's head is "shatter'd" and partly buried in the sand.
• Line 11: The inscription implores the viewer to "look on" Ozymandias's "works." One of those "works" is the statue described in the poem, and it's only a pair of legs and a "shatter'd" head.
• Line 12-13: The statue is described as in a state of "decay" and as a "colossal wreck."
• Line 13-14: We're assuming this statue wasn't always in the middle of nowhere – there must have been some kind of temple or pyramid nearby. Not anymore; the area around the statue is "bare" and the desert is "lone," or empty. The traveler calls our attention to the barrenness of the desert through the extensive use of alliteration (beginning multiple words with the same letter): "boundless and bare," "lone and level," "sands stretch."

Life

There is a lot of death in this poem; the figure represented in the statue is dead, along with the civilization to which he belonged. The statue is destroyed, and so it too is, in some sense, dead. And yet amidst all the death, there are several images of life that give the poem a sense of balance, however slight.

• Lines 1-2: Most of the poem describes a statue, but these first two lines describe an encounter between two living people, the speaker and a "traveler from an antique land."
• Line 6-7: The description of the "sculptor" making a statue introduces another living figure into the poem, as does the reference to the "passions" of Ozymandias. Furthermore, even though the sculpture is "lifeless," the passions still "survive."

Passions and Feelings

While most of the poem describes a statue, the traveler makes a point of telling us that Ozymandias's "passions" still survive: they are "stamp'd" on the statue, giving all those who view the statue a sense of what Ozymandias's disposition was like, or at least what it was like when the statue was made.

• Lines 4-5: The poem describes the features on the face of the statue and, by extension, the features of Ozymandias. He must have been angry about something because his face has a "sneer," a "frown," and a "wrinkled lip."
• Line 6: We are told that the sculptor "well those passions read," that he was somehow able to capture them fairly well in his statue.
• Line 8: The "heart" is the organ most often linked to feelings and passions; it "fed" the passions depicted in the statue. Because the heart didn't literally "feed" the passions, "fed" here is a metaphor.