Analysis and Summary of Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley NCERT Class 10

Percy Shelley: Poems Summary and Analysis of "Ozymandias"

The principal individual beautiful persona expresses that he met an explorer who had been to "an old fashioned land." The voyager let him know that he had seen an incomprehensible yet destroyed statue, where just the legs stayed standing. The face was soaked in the sand, grimacing and scoffing. The stone carver deciphered his subject well. 


There additionally was a platform at the statue, where the voyager read that the statue was of "Ozymandias, King of Kings." Although the platform told "powerful" spectators that they ought to watch out at the King's works and in this manner give up at his enormity, the entire territory was simply secured with level sand. All that is left is the destroyed statue.

"Ozymandias" is a fourteen-line, measured rhyming poem. It is not a customary one, nonetheless. Despite the fact that it is neither a Petrarchan piece nor a Shakespearean poem, the rhyming plan and style take after a Petrarchan work all the more, especially with its 8-6 structure as opposed to 4-4-4-2.

Summary of Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Shelley's Ozymandias: Analysis and Summary 

Here we have a speaker gaining from a voyager about a monster, demolished statue that lay softened and dissolved up the abandon. The title of the sonnet advises the peruser that the subject is the thirteenth century B.C. Egyptian King Ramses II, whom the Greeks called "Ozymandias." The explorer depicts the colossal work of the artist, who could catch the ruler's "interests" and give significant expression to the stone, a something else "dormant thing." The "taunting hand" in line 8 is that of the artist, who had the creative capacity to "ridicule" (that is, both copy and mock) the interests of the lord. The "heart" is as a matter of first importance the king's, which "encouraged" the artist's interests, and thus the sculptor's, thoughtfully recovering the lord's interests in the stone.

The last five lines deride the engraving pounded into the platform of the statue. The first engraving read "I am Ozymandias, King of Kings; on the off chance that anybody wishes to recognize what I am and where I lie, let him outperform me in some of my endeavors." The thought was that he was too capable for even the regular lord to identify with him; even a forceful ruler ought to give up at coordinating his energy. That rule may well stay substantial, however it is undermined by the plain certainty that even a domain is a human creation that will one day pass away. The statue and encompassing desert constitute an analogy for concocted control despite characteristic power. By Shelley's chance, nothing stays except for a smashed bust, disintegrated "look," and "trunkless legs" encompassed with "nothing" however "level sands" that "extend far away." Shelley in this manner brings up human mortality and the destiny of simulated things.

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley Summary

The lesson is essential in Europe: France's authority has finished, and England's will end at some point or another. Everything about the ruler's "adventures" is presently gone, and all that remaining parts of the overwhelming human advancement are broken "stones" alone in the betray. Take note of the utilization of similar sounding word usage to stress the point: "vast and uncovered"; "solitary and level."

It is essential to remember the perspective of "Ozymandias." The point of view on the statue is originating from an obscure voyager who is informing the speaker regarding the scene. This makes a feeling of the secret of history and legend: we are getting the story from an artist who heard it from an explorer who may or won't not have really observed the statue. The statue itself is a declaration of the stone carver, who may or won't not have genuinely caught the interests of the ruler. Our best access to the ruler himself is not the statue, not anything physical, but rather the lord's own particular words.


Verse may toward the end in a way that other human manifestations can't. However, imparting words shows an alternate arrangement of issues. For a certain something, there are issues of interpretation, for the lord did not write in English. All the more truly, there are issues of translation, for clearly Shelley's sonnet does not even precisely replicate the expressions of the engraving.

At long last, we can't miss the general remark on human vanity in the sonnet. It is not only the "powerful" who longing to withstand time; it is normal for individuals to look for eternality and to oppose demise and rot. Moreover, the stone worker himself gets consideration and acclaim that used to be merited by the lord, for all that Ozymandias accomplished has now "rotted" into nothing, while the figure has kept going sufficiently long to make it into verse. As it were, the craftsman has turned out to be more capable than the lord. The main things that "survive" are the craftsman's records of the lord's energy, cut into the stone.

Ozymandias Summary NCERT Class 10

Maybe Shelley picked the medium of verse keeping in mind the end goal to make something more effective and enduring than what governmental issues could accomplish, at the same time understanding that words too will in the long run pass away. Not at all like large portions of his sonnets, "Ozymandias" does not end on a note of trust. There is no additional stanza or finishing up couplet to respect the transient delights of learning or to trust in human advance. Rather, the voyager has nothing more to say, and the persona makes no inferences of his own.