"I met a traveller from an antique land.."

In Shelly's "Ozymandias", the fact that the story is not told in the speaker's point of view proves to be highly significant. This work tells the tale of a statue in an "antique land". The statue is that of the former king, Ozymandias, of the land that once existed. The speaker describes the description of the statue that he received from the traveler: "two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desart" and "half sunk a shattered visage lies". The statue, or its sad remains, is all that remains of this land, which proves to be highly ironic. From the description of the remnants, it is clear that the statue was to serve as a reminder of the greatness and power of the king. The speaker talks of the "frown and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command" on the face of the king's statue and later the inscription on the base of the statue that read "My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" The king's proud nature is obvious and its clear that his intent was to forever be remembered through this statue and "his works", or the land. The irony lies with the fact that the only thing surrounding his statue is nothingness and the statue lies in shattered pieces in the sand.

The fact that the speaker heard this tale from "a traveller from an antique land" only adds to the irony. The land of the once powerful king and his eternal statue are so unimportant that the speaker did not hear about them first hand. He heard them through a random traveler that comes from a distant land, leaving us, the readers, to hear about them from someone who heard about it from someone else. Shelly frames his sonnet in this way, intentionally, as a way to further emphasize how the mighty king has certainly fallen.