The title, “Ozymandias”, reminds me o fan exotic place. It recalls a distant place, far away from my ordinary experience.

         By looking at the lay out, the reader can understand that he/she will read a poem. In particular it is a sonnet: a sonnet is a poem made of 14 lines. It’s organized in two main blocks: an octave (a part made of 8 lines) and a sestine (a part made of 6 lines).

         In the octave the speaking voice introduces the situation: he met a traveler who told him that in the desert he came across a broken statue of stone. It was in a bad condition: you could see the broken legs and a shattered face visage with wrinkles and a terrible expression of command. The reader understands that the man of the statue used to give orders in a vigorous way. the statue made the traveler understand his passions and his feelings very clearly, even if the statue was shattered.

In the sestet the traveler reads a sentence on the pedestal of the statue: the man was the “king of kings”. Now the reader can associate the elements he found in the text: he/she can easily understand that the story is set in Egypt, because of the desert, and that it’s about the statue of an important pharaoh. The poem ends with the contrast between the stately figure of the pharaoh and the desolate land all around.