Question

summary of ozymandias

Answer 1

 The speaker describes a meeting with someone who has traveled to a place where ancient civilizations once existed. We know from the title that he’s talking about egypt. The traveler told the speaker a story about an old, fragmented statue in the middle of the deserthe statue is broken apart, but you can still make out the face of a person the face looks stern and powerful, like a ruler. The sculptor did a good job at expressing the ruler’s personality.On the pedestal near the face, the traveler reads an inscription in which the ruler ozymandias tells anyone who might happen to pass by, basically look around and see how awesome I'm but there is no other evidence of his awesomeness in the vicinity of his giant, broken statue. There is just a lot of sand, as far as the eye can see.

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.