The image of the head of the statue broken and lying in the sand is a metaphor for Ramesses’s fall from power – all that remains of this once so powerful ruler is this shattered legacy. The traveller describes the face as having a grimaced, contemptuous expression. The ‘visage’ or face of the ruined statue lies in the sand at the base of the legs. Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,Īnd wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, He is widely regarded as the greatest, most powerful pharaoh of Ancient Egypt thanks to his celebrated building and military accomplishments. As revealed later in the poem, the statue is of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, also known as Ramesses the Great or Ozymandias in Greek sources, from which the poem takes its name.
The traveller begins to recount his story to the narrator, describing how two large ‘trunkless’ (torsoless) stone legs of a statue stood in the desert. Who said-“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone The story is then told from the traveller’s perspective in the following lines, detaching the narrator and, therefore, Shelley himself from the poem’s message. The ambiguity of this opening line immediately creates a sense of mystery and intrigue. The first line of this famous sonnet introduces ‘a traveller from an antique land’ whose identity Shelley purposefully does not reveal.
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