Question

very brief summary of poem ozymandias

Answer 1

In this sonnet , Shelly illustrates the valley of human greatness and the failures of all attempts to immortalise human achivements .Ozymandias was a great Egyptian king.A life  - like statue of the king was made to immortalise him.But now the statue lies broken and disfigured in a desert.

A traveller from Egypt sees two huge and trunkless legs of a statue in the desert.Near them lies, half - buried , the broken face of statue. On this face one can see the expression of arrogance and a sense of authority which have been skilfully depicted by the sculptor. Int he pedestal the following words were inscribed : 
"My name is Ozymandias  and I am a Great King. Look at the great deeds that I have accomplished and which nobody can equal." The Broken statue is surrounded by a vast desert.

The poem reflects that human glory and pomp are not everlasting . Time works havoc with monuments and statues. Thus, the poet strikes a moral in a suggestive manner.


Source : It is my from a refresher guide.

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.