The Romantic poets: Ozymandias byPercy Bysshe ShelleyThis week, the Guardian and the Observer are running a series of seven pamphlets onthe Romantic poets. To coincide with it, I'm blogging daily on one of each day'sselected works

Carol RumensThursday 28 January 2010 11.52 GMT

The Shelleys' circle enjoyed setting each other themed writing contests: the mostfamous work to have emerged from such a pastime is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

It's less well-known that Shelley's most famous short poem, Ozymandias, was theresult of a competition between himself and his friend Horace Smith, a financier,verse-parodist and author of historical novels. Smith's rival sonnet is called, lessmemorably, In Egypt's Sandy Silence and disadvantages itself early on by the gauchereference to "a gigantic leg". Somehow, Shelley's "two vast and trunkless legs" aremore impressive. But both poems, first Shelley's and then Smith's, were published byLeigh Hunt early in 1818 in consecutive issues of his monthly journal The Examiner.

Shelley's interest in Egyptology was already established, as revealed by some of theimagery of an earlier poem, Alastor, but perhaps it had been rekindled in part by thenews of the excavation of the colossal head of Rameses II. This head would later beshipped to the British Museum. Shelley could not have seen it at the time of writing,and he had never been to Egypt, but he would have certainly seen illustrations ofruined cities and statues. The various literary sources of the poem are fascinatinglyexplored in this essay which suggests that Volney's The Ruins of Empires (a Frenchwork appearing in English translation in 1792) was of major significance, and not onlyto Ozymandias. "The book was central to the evolution of Romanticism from aspecifically English and insular aesthetic to a universal political and philosophicalforce," writes the anonymous author. As potently as the wilderness symbolisedspiritual freedom for the Romantic writers, ancient ruins declared the triumph oftime and nature over human tyranny.

A competition, light-heartedly undertaken, may have been the sonnet's immediateoccasion, but Shelley's passion for the politics of his theme is evident in the poem andintegral to its solidity. Whether a writer is drawing on personal experience or literaryresearch, imagination is crucial, and Shelley approaches the task with greatimaginative flair. First, he sets a fictional scene, introducing a second character, akind of Ancient Mariner, though one with the gift of brevity, to give his "personalaccount" of the ruined sculpture. Virtually all the sonnet is spoken by the traveller.

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His tale is strongly pictorial, and moves with the fluency and drive of recollection.Shelley's free, "romantic" way with the sonnet-form – the unusual pattern of therhymes, and the presence of half-rhymes – is wholly appropriate.

Another character in the poem is Ozymandias himself, his whole personality summedup in a few strokes. He seems to have had little facial resemblance to the benign,serenely smiling pharaoh familiar to visitors to the British Museum. Shelley hascreated a monster, it seems, out of his own revulsion from tyranny. The "wrinkled lip"is a particularly brilliant detail that suggests an age of sneering and sensuality in itspossessor.

There is a third character, of course: the sculptor who, it seems, has revealed hismaster's true nature, and, moreover, must be responsible for the telling second half ofthe inscription: "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

The full irony of this is brought home by the final image of the boundless sands,stretching as far as the eye can see. If there is little left of the sculptor's work, there isenough, so far, to bear witness to tyranny. Of the tyrant's works, nothing remains.Russian poets used to have a saying that the poet outlives the tsar. Here, the sculptoroutlives the pharaoh, at least until nature reclaims the last vestiges of masonry, andthese, too, are dissolved to sand. 

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique landWho said – 'Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand 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 readWhich 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 decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.'

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