Notes
1] Shelley evidently wrote this sonnet at Marlow in friendly competition with Horace Smith, whose own sonnet of the same name was published Feb. 1, 1818, also in The Examiner, no. 527, p. 73:
In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desart knows: --
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." -- The City's gone, --
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.We wonder, -- and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
5] lip Bod. Shelley MS e.4; lips 1819
6] Lines 6-8 pose some difficulty, but "survive"
(7) must be a transitive verb whose object is "The hand" and "the
heart" (8). The "passions" on Ozymandias' face, that is, survive or
live on after both hand and heart. "The hand that mocked them" seems to
be the sculptor's hand, delineating the vainglory of his subject in
"these lifeless things"; and "the heart that fed" must be Ozymandias'
own, feeding on (perhaps) its own arrogance. Kelvin Everest and
Geoffrey Matthews suggest that line 8 ends with an ellipsis: "and the
heart that fed [them]" (that is, those same passions that are the
referent of the pronoun "them" governed by "mocked" (The Poems of Shelley, II: 1817-1819 [London: Pearson, 2000]: 311).
9] these words appear: 1819; this legend clear Bodl. Shelley MS e.4.
10] Ozymandias: Osymandias, Greek name for the Egyptian king Rameses II (1304-1237 BC). Diodorus Siculus, in his Library of History
(trans. C. H. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 303 [Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961]: I, 47), records the inscription
on the pedestal of his statue (at the Ramesseum, on the other side of
the Nile river from Luxor) as "King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If
anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one
of my works."
12] Nothing beside remains: 1819; No thing remains beside. Bodl. Shelley MS. e.4.
Online text copyright © 2005, Ian Lancashire for the Department
of English, University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services,
University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Bodleian Library MS Shelley e.4, fol. 85r. Facsimile edited by Paul Dawson, The Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, gen. ed. D. H. Reiman (1988). Additional readings from Percy Bysshe Shelley, Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue; with Other Poems (London: C. and J. Ollier, 1819). D-10/3264 Fisher Rare Book Library
First publication date:
11
January
1818
Publication date note: Glirastes, "Ozymandias," The Examiner, no. 524 (Jan. 11, 1818). AP E83 MICR mfm Robarts Library
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire, J. D. Robins
RP edition: 2RP 2.244; 2002.
Recent editing: 4:2002/5/20*1:2002/11/16*1:2002/11/16*1:2002/11/16
Composition date:
26
December
1817
-
28
December
1817
Form: Sonnet
Rhyme: ababacdcedefef