Ozymandias
"Ozymandias" ( o-zee-MAN-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 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.
The poem was created as part of a friendly competition in which Shelley and fellow poet Horace Smith each created a poem on the subject of Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II under the title of Ozymandias, the Greek name for the pharaoh. Shelley's poem explores the ravages of time and the oblivion to which the legacies of even the greatest men are subject.
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