Yeats, and political activists like Karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi. His writings achieved greater fame after he died, inspiring fellow poets like Robert Browning and W.B. He is alternately lauded as one of the finer English lyric poets and denigrated as the least talented of the so-called “second generation” of English Romantics (Shelley, George Gordon “Lord” Byron, and John Keats). “Ozymandias” has enjoyed popularity since publication, but Shelley himself has seen a more mixed reception.

“Ozymandias” (the Greek name of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II) was on trend: Ancient Egypt was popular in England at the time due to archaeological finds from Napoleon’s campaign there in the years 1798 to 1801. Shelley, like many poets of his age, knew Greek and Latin, and was fascinated by the ancient world, though he tended to write on Greco-Roman topics rather than Egyptian. “Ozymandias” represents something of a departure from Shelley’s usual subject matter: the Romantic staples of nature, melancholy, hope, and love. Upon it there is this inscription:-‘I am Osymandyas, king of kings if any would know how great I am, and where I lie, let him excel me in any of my works’ ( The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian, trans.

In so great a work there is not to be discerned the least flaw, or any other blemish. This piece is not only commendable for its greatness, but admirable for its cut and workmanship, and the excellency of the stone. One of these, made in a sitting posture, is the greatest in all Egypt, the measure of his foot exceeding seven cubits.

The passage described an Egyptian monument that was ancient even to its author: Shelley and his houseguest, the poet and novelist Howard Smith, challenged each other to write a sonnet based on a passage from the Roman-era historian Diodorus Siculus. Now one of Shelley’s most recognizable and widely anthologized poems, “Ozymandias” was the result of a good-natured writing contest between friends.

Percy shelley ozymandias