Ozymandias of Egypt
I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed;And on the pedestal these words appear:‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Words in this poem
- visage n.
- The face, countenance, or look of a person or an animal; -- chiefly applied to the human face. [F. visage, from L. visus a seeing, a look, fr. videre, visum, to see. See Vision.]
- sculptor n.
- One who sculptures; one whose occupation is to carve statues, or works of sculpture. [L. sculptor, fr. sculpere, sculptum, to carve; cf. scalpere to cut, carve, scratch, and Gr. sculpteur.]
- colossal a.
- Of enormous size; gigantic; huge; as, a colossal statue. [Cf. F. cossal, L. colosseus. See Colossus.]
- lone n.
- A lane. See Loanin.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Ozymandias of Egypt is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems Every Child Should Know The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library, Project Gutenberg ebook #16436; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Mary E. Burt, Ozymandias of Egypt, in Poems Every Child Should Know (1904), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16436, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/poems-every-child/ozymandias-of-egypt.html, id L25331.
Form and metre
Ozymandias of Egypt is 14 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 A-A-ABCBDCDEDE landA · stone · sandA · frown · commandA · readB · thingsC · fedB · appearD · kingsC · despairD · decayE · bareD · awayE
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I met a traveller from an antique land | 10 | ···/˘··˘/· |
| Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone | 10 | ·········· |
| Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| Tell that its sculptor well those passions read | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, | 10 | ··˘/···/˘· |
| The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed; | 10 | ·········· |
| And on the pedestal these words appear: | 10 | ···/˘˘··˘/ |
| ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: | 10 | ·········· |
| Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| Nothing beside remains. Round the decay | 10 | /˘˘/˘/··˘/ |
| Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, | 10 | ··˘/˘·/˘·· |
| The lone and level sands stretch far away.” | 10 | ···/˘···˘/ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.