Summary

“Ozymandias” begins with the unnamed speaker stating that he “met a traveller from an antique land” (1) and then ceding the narration to this traveler. The traveler describes two massive “legs of stone” (2), with no torso attached, that “Stand in the desert” (3). Near these legs lies what remains of a face, “Half sunk” (4) in the sand. Though the statue’s former head is now a “shattered visage” (4), its expression, particularly around the mouth, speaks to its sculptor’s understanding of the king he depicted. The sculptor understood the king to be in “cold command” (5) and stamped these “passions” (6) onto the statue’s face, even as the sculptor’s hand “mocked them” (8). The first eight lines, or octave, thus establish the image of a king whose statue now lays in ruins in the desert, as well as nodding to the somewhat subversive technique of the sculptor...