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Ozymandias

The name Ozymandias is generally believed to refer to Rameses the Great (i.e. Rameses II).

Ozymandias is the subject of a famous sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

From the sonnet:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The impact of the sonnet's message comes from its double irony. The tyrant declares, "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Yet "nothing beside remains". So "the mighty" should not despair as Ozymandias intended. And yet they should indeed despair because they will share his fate of inevitable oblivion in the sands of time.

Sources

Reiman, Donald H. and Sharon B. Powers Shelley's Poetry and Prose (Norton, 1977)

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