The Other Ozymandias
A Deep Dive into Empire and Poetry
The Younger Memnon Arrives in London
In antiquity, Ozymandias was the Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213 BCE) who ruled in the 19th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt.
In 1817, the British Museum announced its latest acquisition: a large bust of Ramesses II from the thirteenth century BCE. It was once part of a massive, full-body statue at the Ramesseum, the mortuary temple to Ramesses at Thebes. A seven-ton fragment — comprised of the head and torso — had been removed in 1816 by the Italian adventurer Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1728–1823).
Inspired by the announcement, two English poets wrote poems in friendly competition and submitted them to The Examiner in London.
No doubt you’ve heard one of the poems. “Ozymandias” is a sonnet written by Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822). The poem is regarded as one of Shelley’s most famous works and is frequently anthologized.
Shelley’s now-famous poem has eclipsed the entry of his friend Horace Smith (1779–1849), who wrote his sonnet on the same topic and with the same title.
Shelley’s was published on January 11, 1818 under the pen name Glirastes, and Smith’s was published on February 1, 1818 with the initials H.S.
Shelley & Smith
“Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
“Ozymandias” by Horace Smith
In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert 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 fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
The Poetry of Empire
While one piece of one statue served as the immediate inspiration for the two sonnets, the poems might be read within a larger historical context. In 1798 — just twenty years earlier — Napoleon conquered Egypt, and treasures like The Younger Memnon entered the European imagination. The Napoleonic Wars erupted in 1803, and a series of major conflicts tore through the continent as France fought a fluctuating array of European powers, primarily led and financed by the United Kingdom. By 1812, France controlled — to varying degrees — almost all of Europe; her territory spanned from Denmark to Italy, from Spain to Austria. Only the Russian and Ottoman empires could contain the superpower. France began her Russian campaign that year, and suffered an abysmal defeat. By the summer of 1815, the Congress of Vienna was negotiated and signed. France was reduced down to her original borders, which have remained effectively unchanged. In the power vacuum that followed, the British Empire continued to swell unchecked. Shelley’s disdain for this imperial growth is well-documented.
There are certain tangible advantages to empires — territorial buffers and economic mercantilism — and superpowers fight wars among each other over these resources. But imperial contest transcends time. Empires are borne of ego, and many of their struggles are struggles of identity.
Empires turn to history to define who they are. In the 1930s, Benito Mussolini imagined Fascist Italy as a risorgimento of the Roman Empire. Following the annexation of Crimea and growing interests in post-Soviet states, many have said that Vladimir Putin seeks to restore the Russian Federation to the status once held by the U.S.S.R.
The Empire of Poetry
Empires turn to history to define who they are not. The self-proclaimed Islamic State destroys historical relics that it finds repugnant to Islam, e.g. polytheistic temples in Palmyra. (This practice is not — as the Islamic State claims — a continuation of Muhammad’s destruction of the idols at the Kaaba. This practice is not — as pundits claim — unique to Islam. This practice is a textbook example of a state asserting its sovereignty by minimizing religion. Napoleon held secular festivals in Notre-Dame de Paris; Mao burned Bibles.) The United States has often struggled to throw off its continental roots. This struggle might be best described in Walt Whitman’s 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass. In the beginning, Whitman writes:
AMERICA … perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house … perceives that it waits a little while in the door … that it was fittest for its days … that its action has descended to the stalwart and well shaped heir who approaches … and that he shall be fittest for his days.
By 1855, the United States had established herself as a nation independent of Europe in political and economic terms. Europe is the corpse; America is the heir. Europe — whose best days lie in the past — must make way for America — whose best days lie in the future. Leaves of Grass owes its genesis to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s The Poet, an 1844 essay which expressed the need for the United States to have its own unique voice to write about the nation’s virtues and vices. At some point, Emerson writes:
For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations.
The Catch
It is clear that Shelley’s sonnet aims to criticize empires, or at least the hubris of emperors. But is criticism a zero-sum game? Does the condemning of one idea cause the commending of another? If Shelley is so adamantly against empires, perhaps he is promoting some other thing. In “A Poem to Outlast Empires,” David Mikics argues that Shelley’s “Ozymandias” praises poets, or at least poetry. At the end, Mikics writes:
Timelessness can be achieved only by the poet’s words, not by the ruler’s will to dominate. The fallen titan Ozymandias becomes an occasion for Shelley’s exercise of this most tenuous yet persisting form, poetry. Shelley’s sonnet, a brief epitome of poetic thinking, has outlasted empires.
Depending on frame of reference, Mikics is accurate in his appraisal of this poem’s staying power. “Ozymandias” was written two centuries ago, but it’s still referenced in Breaking Bad. It remains one of the most recognizable poems in the English language. Its message is universal — all things go.
But what about Ramesses II? He ruled for 66 years. He lived for 90 years. The 19th Dynasty lasted for 103 years. The Ramesside Period — an era comprised of the 19th and 20th Dynasties — lasted 223 years. The Pharonic Period — beginning with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt and ending with Macedonian conquest — lasted more than 3,000 years. Did he go? Did his empire go? Yes, but it took some time.
Will Shelley’s “Ozymandias” last forever? No. Will it last 3,000 years? Maybe. But see how quickly Smith’s poem faded from view — it’s already a literal footnote in the canon. Shelley’s poem talks the talk, but Smith’s walks the walk, as it were.
Two Points of Solace
Yes, everything fades to history. All matter will decay down to its atoms. The sands of time wear down what we put up. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. All things go.
But history itself remains untouched. Nothing done can be undone. Nothing unhappens.
That which is cannot last in its being. That which was can last in its having been.
Yes, poets die. No one will be left. Poems are lost. The libraries will crumble. The books will rot. Nothing will be left. All things go.
But — in some ways — poetry does not die. The task of the poet is not to speak but to listen. It’s all out there.
“For poetry was all written before time was.”