The denotative analysis of “Ozymandias” by P.B.Shelley

As regards the first eight lines of the poem:

The poem is about a sculpture which lays in the desert, semi-covered and shattered by the sand. The description of the sculpture is told by a 1^st person narrator who listens to  a traveller  telling about an adventure of his. 

The sculpture is one of a  king, whose name is Ozymandias, a different name for an Egyptian Pharaoh. The head of the sculpture is half-covered by the sand and it is detached by the rest of the sculpture. The shape of the lips makes the poet aware both of the king's character and of the sculptor's great skill in  understanding  the king's emotion and in  recording them in way so as to make them still visible to the eye of tose who look at the rests of the sculpture.  

Besides the sculptor was able to transfer human emotions to a lifeless thing: the stone sculpture. The king's character is effectively described by the following line: “ ...whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command”.

The figureresulting of the poem is the one of an angry wicked derisive tough cruel man.

Because of that representation, a mockery, also part of the sculptor's character is captured in the sculpture. As matter of fact line 8 sounds : “The hand that mocked them – (the sculptor) - and the heart that fed – (the king)”.