Legacy of Time

Shelley uses a third person point of view in the telling of the story of Ozymandias as way showing how far the “King of Kings” has fallen. The lines, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: / Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” (Lines 10&11) in conjunction with the speaker’s telling of the story are the extremes of the poem. The words etched on the pedestal are filled with, pride, and ego. While the “traveller” tells the story of this broken statue of a nameless king lying in the sand that no one has heard of. The statue is one way that Ozymandias beats his chest for all to see how powerful he is. But the “traveller” shows us another side, the lost and forgotten great king an oddity from the past. The moral of Ozymandias (the Greek name for Ramses II) is that it doesn’t matter who you are that eventually time will erode away your mark left on the world. No matter how great or not so great one is we are all the same in the end. Eventually our legacy will be covered by the sands of time. Maybe one day to be found again and looked upon as some kind of curiosity of a past long forgotten.