‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
- Source
- Ozymandias, 1818
- Written
- 1818
About this quotation
The inscription is quoted by a traveller who has seen a ruined statue in the desert, of which only two legs and a shattered face survive. Shelley wrote the sonnet in friendly competition with his friend Horace Smith, and it was first printed in The Examiner in January 1818.