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Sonnet · Life

Ozymandias

by Percy Bysshe Shelley · 1818

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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Quick facts

Poem
Ozymandias
Poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Published
1818
Length
14 lines
Form
Sonnet
Themes
Life, Power & Hubris

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape
14 lines · one 14-line stanza
Line length
Mostly 10-syllable lines (pentameter length).

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Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822
Source record
PoetryDBOzymandias by percy-bysshe-shelley, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision
Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record
1818
Text fingerprint
SHA-256 1587f97ccabf0b44
Editorial handling
Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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