Ozymandias (Percy Bysshe poem) Add a review

"Ozymandias" ( OZ-im-AN-dee-əs) is a sonnet written by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. It was first published in the 11 January 1818 issue of The Examiner of London.

The poem was the result of a friendly competition between Shelley and fellow poet Horace Smith; using the subject of Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, Ozymandias being the Greek name for the pharaoh. Both Shelley's poem and Smith's Ozymandias explore the ravages of time to which the legacies of even the greatest are subject.

Ozymandias was included the following year in Shelley's collection Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; with Other Poems, and in a posthumous compilation of his poems published in 1826.