Question

Give a summary of the poem Ozymandias

Answer 1

A traveler tells the poet that two legs stand in the desert. Near them on the sand lies a damaged stone head. The face is distinguished by a sneer and frown which the sculptor has carved on the features. On the pedestal are inscribed words "My name is Ozymandias,king of kings: Look on my works,ye Mighty,and despair!" Around the huge fragments stretches the empty desert.

Answer 2

The speaker recalls having met a traveller from an ancient land who told him a story about the ruins of a statue in the  desert of his native country. The traveller said that two vast legs of stone stand without a body and near this, a massive  crumbling and broken stone-head lies, which is half sunk in the sand.

The statue has a bitter and cruel expression of  ‘sneer and cold command’ and this indicates that the sculptor had understood the passions of his subject really well.

It was obvious that the statue was of a man who sneered with contempt for those who were weaker than himself, yet  fed his people because of something in his heart. On the pedestal of the statue these words are inscribed, ‘‘My name is

Ozymandias, I am the king of kings. If anyone wishes to know how great I am, then let him surpass any of my works.”

Around the decaying ruin of the statue, nothing remains, only the ‘lone’ and level sands’ which stretch out around it,  far away.